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Ergodic Theory
Ergodic theory ( Greek: ' "work", ' "way") is a branch of mathematics that studies statistical properties of deterministic dynamical systems; it is the study of ergodicity. In this context, statistical properties means properties which are expressed through the behavior of time averages of various functions along trajectories of dynamical systems. The notion of deterministic dynamical systems assumes that the equations determining the dynamics do not contain any random perturbations, noise, etc. Thus, the statistics with which we are concerned are properties of the dynamics. Ergodic theory, like probability theory, is based on general notions of measure theory. Its initial development was motivated by problems of statistical physics. A central concern of ergodic theory is the behavior of a dynamical system when it is allowed to run for a long time. The first result in this direction is the Poincaré recurrence theorem, which claims that almost all points in any subset of the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ancient Greek
Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic period (), and the Classical period (). Ancient Greek was the language of Homer and of fifth-century Athenian historians, playwrights, and philosophers. It has contributed many words to English vocabulary and has been a standard subject of study in educational institutions of the Western world since the Renaissance. This article primarily contains information about the Epic and Classical periods of the language. From the Hellenistic period (), Ancient Greek was followed by Koine Greek, which is regarded as a separate historical stage, although its earliest form closely resembles Attic Greek and its latest form approaches Medieval Greek. There were several regional dialects of Ancient Greek, of which Attic Greek developed into Koi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ergodic Hypothesis
In physics and thermodynamics, the ergodic hypothesis says that, over long periods of time, the time spent by a system in some region of the phase space of microstates with the same energy is proportional to the volume of this region, i.e., that all accessible microstates are equiprobable over a long period of time. Liouville's theorem states that, for Hamiltonian systems, the local density of microstates following a particle path through phase space is constant as viewed by an observer moving with the ensemble (i.e., the convective time derivative is zero). Thus, if the microstates are uniformly distributed in phase space initially, they will remain so at all times. But Liouville's theorem does ''not'' imply that the ergodic hypothesis holds for all Hamiltonian systems. The ergodic hypothesis is often assumed in the statistical analysis of computational physics. The analyst would assume that the average of a process parameter over time and the average over the statist ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Diophantine Approximations
In number theory, the study of Diophantine approximation deals with the approximation of real numbers by rational numbers. It is named after Diophantus of Alexandria. The first problem was to know how well a real number can be approximated by rational numbers. For this problem, a rational number ''a''/''b'' is a "good" approximation of a real number ''α'' if the absolute value of the difference between ''a''/''b'' and ''α'' may not decrease if ''a''/''b'' is replaced by another rational number with a smaller denominator. This problem was solved during the 18th century by means of continued fractions. Knowing the "best" approximations of a given number, the main problem of the field is to find sharp upper and lower bounds of the above difference, expressed as a function of the denominator. It appears that these bounds depend on the nature of the real numbers to be approximated: the lower bound for the approximation of a rational number by another rational number is larger than ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Number Theory
Number theory (or arithmetic or higher arithmetic in older usage) is a branch of pure mathematics devoted primarily to the study of the integers and integer-valued functions. German mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777–1855) said, "Mathematics is the queen of the sciences—and number theory is the queen of mathematics."German original: "Die Mathematik ist die Königin der Wissenschaften, und die Arithmetik ist die Königin der Mathematik." Number theorists study prime numbers as well as the properties of mathematical objects made out of integers (for example, rational numbers) or defined as generalizations of the integers (for example, algebraic integers). Integers can be considered either in themselves or as solutions to equations ( Diophantine geometry). Questions in number theory are often best understood through the study of analytical objects (for example, the Riemann zeta function) that encode properties of the integers, primes or other number-theoretic obj ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Algebraic Group
In mathematics, an algebraic group is an algebraic variety endowed with a group structure which is compatible with its structure as an algebraic variety. Thus the study of algebraic groups belongs both to algebraic geometry and group theory. Many groups of geometric transformations are algebraic groups; for example, orthogonal groups, general linear groups, projective groups, Euclidean groups, etc. Many matrix groups are also algebraic. Other algebraic groups occur naturally in algebraic geometry, such as elliptic curves and Jacobian varieties. An important class of algebraic groups is given by the affine algebraic groups, those whose underlying algebraic variety is an affine variety; they are exactly the algebraic subgroups of the general linear group, and are therefore also called ''linear algebraic groups''. Another class is formed by the abelian varieties, which are the algebraic groups whose underlying variety is a projective variety. Chevalley's structure theorem ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lattice (discrete Subgroup)
In Lie theory and related areas of mathematics, a lattice in a locally compact group is a discrete subgroup with the property that the quotient space has finite invariant measure. In the special case of subgroups of R''n'', this amounts to the usual geometric notion of a lattice as a periodic subset of points, and both the algebraic structure of lattices and the geometry of the space of all lattices are relatively well understood. The theory is particularly rich for lattices in semisimple Lie groups or more generally in semisimple algebraic groups over local fields. In particular there is a wealth of rigidity results in this setting, and a celebrated theorem of Grigory Margulis states that in most cases all lattices are obtained as arithmetic groups. Lattices are also well-studied in some other classes of groups, in particular groups associated to Kac–Moody algebras and automorphisms groups of regular trees (the latter are known as ''tree lattices''). Lattices are of int ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Representation Theory
Representation theory is a branch of mathematics that studies abstract algebraic structures by ''representing'' their elements as linear transformations of vector spaces, and studies modules over these abstract algebraic structures. In essence, a representation makes an abstract algebraic object more concrete by describing its elements by matrices and their algebraic operations (for example, matrix addition, matrix multiplication). The theory of matrices and linear operators is well-understood, so representations of more abstract objects in terms of familiar linear algebra objects helps glean properties and sometimes simplify calculations on more abstract theories. The algebraic objects amenable to such a description include groups, associative algebras and Lie algebras. The most prominent of these (and historically the first) is the representation theory of groups, in which elements of a group are represented by invertible matrices in such a way that the group operation ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lie Theory
In mathematics, the mathematician Sophus Lie ( ) initiated lines of study involving integration of differential equations, transformation groups, and contact of spheres that have come to be called Lie theory. For instance, the latter subject is Lie sphere geometry. This article addresses his approach to transformation groups, which is one of the areas of mathematics, and was worked out by Wilhelm Killing and Élie Cartan. The foundation of Lie theory is the exponential map relating Lie algebras to Lie groups which is called the Lie group–Lie algebra correspondence. The subject is part of differential geometry since Lie groups are differentiable manifolds. Lie groups evolve out of the identity (1) and the tangent vectors to one-parameter subgroups generate the Lie algebra. The structure of a Lie group is implicit in its algebra, and the structure of the Lie algebra is expressed by root systems and root data. Lie theory has been particularly useful in mathematical physics s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Harmonic Analysis
Harmonic analysis is a branch of mathematics concerned with the representation of functions or signals as the superposition of basic waves, and the study of and generalization of the notions of Fourier series and Fourier transforms (i.e. an extended form of Fourier analysis). In the past two centuries, it has become a vast subject with applications in areas as diverse as number theory, representation theory, signal processing, quantum mechanics, tidal analysis and neuroscience. The term "harmonics" originated as the Ancient Greek word ''harmonikos'', meaning "skilled in music". In physical eigenvalue problems, it began to mean waves whose frequencies are integer multiples of one another, as are the frequencies of the harmonics of music notes, but the term has been generalized beyond its original meaning. The classical Fourier transform on R''n'' is still an area of ongoing research, particularly concerning Fourier transformation on more general objects such as tempered di ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Markov Chain
A Markov chain or Markov process is a stochastic model describing a sequence of possible events in which the probability of each event depends only on the state attained in the previous event. Informally, this may be thought of as, "What happens next depends only on the state of affairs ''now''." A countably infinite sequence, in which the chain moves state at discrete time steps, gives a discrete-time Markov chain (DTMC). A continuous-time process is called a continuous-time Markov chain (CTMC). It is named after the Russian mathematician Andrey Markov. Markov chains have many applications as statistical models of real-world processes, such as studying cruise control systems in motor vehicles, queues or lines of customers arriving at an airport, currency exchange rates and animal population dynamics. Markov processes are the basis for general stochastic simulation methods known as Markov chain Monte Carlo, which are used for simulating sampling from complex probability distr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Riemann Surface
In mathematics, particularly in complex analysis, a Riemann surface is a connected one-dimensional complex manifold. These surfaces were first studied by and are named after Bernhard Riemann. Riemann surfaces can be thought of as deformed versions of the complex plane: locally near every point they look like patches of the complex plane, but the global topology can be quite different. For example, they can look like a sphere or a torus or several sheets glued together. The main interest in Riemann surfaces is that holomorphic functions may be defined between them. Riemann surfaces are nowadays considered the natural setting for studying the global behavior of these functions, especially multi-valued functions such as the square root and other algebraic functions, or the logarithm. Every Riemann surface is a two-dimensional real analytic manifold (i.e., a surface), but it contains more structure (specifically a complex structure) which is needed for the unambiguous defi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Eberhard Hopf
Eberhard Frederich Ferdinand Hopf (April 4, 1902 in Salzburg, Austria-Hungary – July 24, 1983 in Bloomington, Indiana, USA) was a mathematician and astronomer, one of the founding fathers of ergodic theory and a pioneer of bifurcation theory who also made significant contributions to the subjects of partial differential equations and integral equations, fluid dynamics, and differential geometry. The Hopf maximum principle is an early result of his (1927) that is one of the most important techniques in the theory of elliptic partial differential equations. Biography Hopf was born in Salzburg, Austria-Hungary, but his scientific career was divided between Germany and the United States. He received his Ph.D. in mathematics in 1926 and his ''Habilitation'' in mathematical astronomy from the University of Berlin in 1929. In 1971, Hopf was the American Mathematical Society Gibbs Lecturer. [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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