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The vector Laplace operator, also denoted by , is a differential operator defined over a vector field. [7] The vector Laplacian is similar to the scalar Laplacian; whereas the scalar Laplacian applies to a scalar field and returns a scalar quantity, the vector Laplacian applies to a vector field , returning a vector quantity.
The Laplace operator represents the flux density of the gradient flow of a function. For instance, the net rate at which a chemical dissolved in a fluid moves toward or away from some point is proportional to the Laplace operator of the chemical concentration at that point; expressed symbolically, the resulting equation is the diffusion equation .
The Hodge Laplacian, also known as the Laplace–de Rham operator, is a differential operator acting on differential forms. (Abstractly, it is a second order operator on each exterior power of the cotangent bundle.) This operator is defined on any manifold equipped with a Riemannian- or pseudo-Riemannian metric.
On functions, the Laplace–de Rham operator is actually the negative of the Laplace–Beltrami operator, as the conventional normalization of the codifferential assures that the Laplace–de Rham operator is (formally) positive definite, whereas the Laplace–Beltrami operator is typically negative. The sign is merely a convention, and both ...
This operator is invertible, and its inverse is compact and self-adjoint so that the usual spectral theorem can be applied to obtain the eigenspaces of Δ and the reciprocals 1/λ of its eigenvalues. One of the primary tools in the study of the Dirichlet eigenvalues is the max-min principle: the first eigenvalue λ 1 minimizes the Dirichlet ...
The continuous -Laplace operator is a second-order differential operator that can be well-translated to finite weighted graphs. It allows the translation of various partial differential equations, e.g., the heat equation, to the graph setting.
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.
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.