Potential Function (other)
The term potential function may refer to: * A mathematical function whose values are a physical potential * The class of functions known as harmonic functions, which are the topic of study in potential theory * The potential function of a potential game * In the potential method In computational complexity theory, the potential method is a method used to analyze the amortized time and space complexity of a data structure, a measure of its performance over sequences of operations that smooths out the cost of infrequent but ...

Function (mathematics)
In mathematics, a function from a set to a set assigns to each element of exactly one element of .; the words map, mapping, transformation, correspondence, and operator are often used synonymously. The set is called the domain of the function and the set is called the codomain of the function.Codomain ''Encyclopedia of Mathematics'Codomain. ''Encyclopedia of Mathematics''/ref> The earliest known approach to the notion of function can be traced back to works of Persian mathematicians Al-Biruni and Sharaf al-Din al-Tusi. Functions were originally the idealization of how a varying quantity depends on another quantity. For example, the position of a planet is a ''function'' of time. Historically, the concept was elaborated with the infinitesimal calculus at the end of the 17th century, and, until the 19th century, the functions that were considered were differentiable (that is, they had a high degree of regularity). The concept of a function was formalized at the end of the ...
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Scalar Potential
In mathematical physics, scalar potential, simply stated, describes the situation where the difference in the potential energies of an object in two different positions depends only on the positions, not upon the path taken by the object in traveling from one position to the other. It is a scalar field in three-space: a directionless value (scalar) that depends only on its location. A familiar example is potential energy due to gravity. A ''scalar potential'' is a fundamental concept in vector analysis and physics (the adjective ''scalar'' is frequently omitted if there is no danger of confusion with ''vector potential''). The scalar potential is an example of a scalar field. Given a vector field , the scalar potential is defined such that: : \mathbf = -\nabla P = - \left( \frac, \frac, \frac \right), where is the gradient of and the second part of the equation is minus the gradient for a function of the Cartesian coordinates . In some cases, mathematicians may use ...
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Harmonic Function
In mathematics, mathematical physics and the theory of stochastic processes, a harmonic function is a twice continuously differentiable function f: U \to \mathbb R, where is an open subset of that satisfies Laplace's equation, that is, : \frac + \frac + \cdots + \frac = 0 everywhere on . This is usually written as : \nabla^2 f = 0 or :\Delta f = 0 Etymology of the term "harmonic" The descriptor "harmonic" in the name harmonic function originates from a point on a taut string which is undergoing harmonic motion. The solution to the differential equation for this type of motion can be written in terms of sines and cosines, functions which are thus referred to as ''harmonics''. Fourier analysis involves expanding functions on the unit circle in terms of a series of these harmonics. 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" ...
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Potential Theory
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 satisfy Poisson's equation—or in the vacuum, Laplace's equation. There is considerable overlap between potential theory and the theory of Poisson's equation to the extent that it is impossible to draw a distinction between these two fields. The difference is more one of emphasis than subject matter and rests on the following distinction: potential theory focuses on the properties of the functions as opposed to the properties of the equation. For example, a result about the singularities of harmonic functions would be said to belong to potential theory whilst a result on how the solution depends ...
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Potential Game
In game theory, a game is said to be a potential game if the incentive of all players to change their strategy can be expressed using a single global function called the potential function. The concept originated in a 1996 paper by Dov Monderer and Lloyd Shapley. The properties of several types of potential games have since been studied. Games can be either ''ordinal'' or ''cardinal'' potential games. In cardinal games, the difference in individual payoffs for each player from individually changing one's strategy, other things equal, has to have the same value as the difference in values for the potential function. In ordinal games, only the signs of the differences have to be the same. The potential function is a useful tool to analyze equilibrium properties of games, since the incentives of all players are mapped into one function, and the set of pure Nash equilibria can be found by locating the local optima of the potential function. Convergence and finite-time convergence of ...
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