Energy Landscape - Formal Definition

Formal Definition

Mathematically, an energy landscape is a continuous function associating each physical state with an energy, where is a topological space.

In the continuous case, where is the number of degrees of freedom of the system. The graph of a continuous energy landscape is a hypersurface in .

Hills and valleys in the energy lanscape correpond to local maxima and minima of, respectively.

Read more about this topic:  Energy Landscape

Famous quotes containing the words formal and/or definition:

    Then the justice,
    In fair round belly with good capon lined,
    With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
    Full of wise saws and modern instances;
    And so he plays his part.
    William Shakespeare (1564–1616)

    Scientific method is the way to truth, but it affords, even in
    principle, no unique definition of truth. Any so-called pragmatic
    definition of truth is doomed to failure equally.
    Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)