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In thermodynamics, a critical point (or critical state) is the end point of a phase equilibrium curve. One example is the liquid–vapor critical point, the end point of the pressure–temperature curve that designates conditions under which a liquid and its vapor can coexist.
A critical point of a function of a single real variable, f (x), is a value x 0 in the domain of f where f is not differentiable or its derivative is 0 (i.e. ′ =). [2] A critical value is the image under f of a critical point.
At the remaining critical point (0, 0) the second derivative test is insufficient, and one must use higher order tests or other tools to determine the behavior of the function at this point. (In fact, one can show that f takes both positive and negative values in small neighborhoods around (0, 0) and so this point is a saddle point of f.)
After establishing the critical points of a function, the second-derivative test uses the value of the second derivative at those points to determine whether such points are a local maximum or a local minimum. [1] If the function f is twice-differentiable at a critical point x (i.e. a point where f ′ (x) = 0), then:
This fold develops from a critical point defined by specific values of pressure, temperature, and molar volume. Because the surface is plotted using dimensionless variables that are formed by the ratio of each property to its respective critical value, the critical point is located at the coordinates (,,). When drawn using these dimensionless ...
In thermodynamics, the reduced properties of a fluid are a set of state variables scaled by the fluid's state properties at its critical point.These dimensionless thermodynamic coordinates, taken together with a substance's compressibility factor, provide the basis for the simplest form of the theorem of corresponding states.
The Hessian matrix plays an important role in Morse theory and catastrophe theory, because its kernel and eigenvalues allow classification of the critical points. [2] [3] [4] The determinant of the Hessian matrix, when evaluated at a critical point of a function, is equal to the Gaussian curvature of the function considered as a manifold. The ...
The two critical points occur at saddle points where x = 1 and x = −1. In order to solve this problem with a numerical optimization technique, we must first transform this problem such that the critical points occur at local minima. This is done by computing the magnitude of the gradient of the unconstrained optimization problem.