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In mathematics and physics, Laplace's equation is a second-order partial differential equation named after Pierre-Simon Laplace, who first studied its properties.This is often written as = or =, where = = is the Laplace operator, [note 1] is the divergence operator (also symbolized "div"), is the gradient operator (also symbolized "grad"), and (,,) is a twice-differentiable real-valued function.
Since this holds for all smooth regions V, one can show that it implies: = = The left-hand side of this equation is the Laplace operator, and the entire equation Δu = 0 is known as Laplace's equation. Solutions of the Laplace equation, i.e. functions whose Laplacian is identically zero, thus represent possible equilibrium densities under ...
In this equation, we used sup and inf instead of max and min because the graph (,) does not have to be locally finite (i.e., to have finite degrees): a key example is when () is the set of points in a domain in , and (,) if their Euclidean distance is at most . The importance of this example lies in the following.
In mathematics, the discrete Laplace operator is an analog of the continuous Laplace operator, defined so that it has meaning on a graph or a discrete grid.For the case of a finite-dimensional graph (having a finite number of edges and vertices), the discrete Laplace operator is more commonly called the Laplacian matrix.
Dirichlet problems are typical of elliptic partial differential equations, and potential theory, and the Laplace equation in particular. Other examples include the biharmonic equation and related equations in elasticity theory. They are one of several types of classes of PDE problems defined by the information given at the boundary, including ...
The heat equation is the prototypical example of a parabolic partial differential equation. Using the Laplace operator, the heat equation can be simplified, and generalized to similar equations over spaces of arbitrary number of dimensions, as = =,
Considering higher dimensional analogues of the harmonics on the unit n-sphere, one arrives at the spherical harmonics. These functions satisfy Laplace's equation and over time "harmonic" was used to refer to all functions satisfying Laplace's equation. [1]
In mathematics and mathematical physics, potential theory is the study of harmonic functions.. The term "potential theory" was coined in 19th-century physics when it was realized that two fundamental forces of nature known at the time, namely gravity and the electrostatic force, could be modeled using functions called the gravitational potential and electrostatic potential, both of which ...