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A continuity equation is the mathematical way to express this kind of statement. For example, the continuity equation for electric charge states that the amount of electric charge in any volume of space can only change by the amount of electric current flowing into or out of that volume through its boundaries.
The continuity equation for the conserved current is a statement of a conservation law. Examples of canonical conjugate quantities are: Time and energy - the continuous translational symmetry of time implies the conservation of energy; Space and momentum - the continuous translational symmetry of space implies the conservation of momentum
This notion of continuity is the same as topological continuity when the partially ordered sets are given the Scott topology. [ 19 ] [ 20 ] In category theory , a functor F : C → D {\displaystyle F:{\mathcal {C}}\to {\mathcal {D}}} between two categories is called continuous if it commutes with small limits .
In continuum mechanics, the most general form of an exact conservation law is given by a continuity equation. For example, conservation of electric charge q is = where ∇⋅ is the divergence operator, ρ is the density of q (amount per unit volume), j is the flux of q (amount crossing a unit area in unit time), and t is time.
This equation is called the mass continuity equation, or simply the continuity equation. This equation generally accompanies the Navier–Stokes equation. In the case of an incompressible fluid, Dρ / Dt = 0 (the density following the path of a fluid element is constant) and the equation reduces to:
The law can be formulated mathematically in the fields of fluid mechanics and continuum mechanics, where the conservation of mass is usually expressed using the continuity equation, given in differential form as + =, where is the density (mass per unit volume), is the time, is the divergence, and is the flow velocity field.
The probability density is = | |, this equation is exactly the continuity equation, appearing in many situations in physics where we need to describe the local conservation of quantities. The best example is in classical electrodynamics, where j corresponds to current density corresponding to electric charge, and the density is the charge-density.
The definition of probability current and Schrödinger's equation can be used to derive the continuity equation, which has exactly the same forms as those for hydrodynamics and electromagnetism. [6] For some wave function Ψ, let: