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:
“The bed is now as public as the dinner table and governed by the same rules of formal confrontation.”
—Angela Carter (1940–1992)
“Mothers often are too easily intimidated by their children’s negative reactions...When the child cries or is unhappy, the mother reads this as meaning that she is a failure. This is why it is so important for a mother to know...that the process of growing up involves by definition things that her child is not going to like. Her job is not to create a bed of roses, but to help him learn how to pick his way through the thorns.”
—Elaine Heffner (20th century)