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Interchanging the vector field v and ∇ operator, we arrive at the cross product of a vector field with curl of a vector field: = () , where ∇ F is the Feynman subscript notation, which considers only the variation due to the vector field F (i.e., in this case, v is treated as being constant in space).
For a tensor field of order k > 1, the tensor field of order k is defined by the recursive relation = where is an arbitrary constant vector. A tensor field of order greater than one may be decomposed into a sum of outer products, and then the following identity may be used: = ().
When applied to a field (a function defined on a multi-dimensional domain), it may denote any one of three operations depending on the way it is applied: the gradient or (locally) steepest slope of a scalar field (or sometimes of a vector field, as in the Navier–Stokes equations); the divergence of a vector field; or the curl (rotation) of a ...
In vector calculus, divergence is a vector operator that operates on a vector field, producing a scalar field giving the quantity of the vector field's source at each point. More technically, the divergence represents the volume density of the outward flux of a vector field from an infinitesimal volume around a given point.
The curl of an order-n > 1 tensor field () is also defined using the recursive relation = ; = where c is an arbitrary constant vector and v is a vector field. Curl of a first-order tensor (vector) field
The curl is an operation which takes a vector field and produces another vector field. The curl is defined only in three dimensions, but some properties of the curl can be captured in higher dimensions with the exterior derivative .
The del operator in this system leads to the following expressions for the gradient and Laplacian for scalar fields, = ^ + ^ + ^, = + () + = (+) + () + , And it leads to the following expressions for the divergence and curl of vector fields,
The classical Stokes' theorem relates the surface integral of the curl of a vector field over a surface in Euclidean three-space to the line integral of the vector field over its boundary. It is a special case of the general Stokes theorem (with n = 2 {\displaystyle n=2} ) once we identify a vector field with a 1-form using the metric on ...