Latency or latent may refer to:

Science and technology

Latent heat Latent heat (also known as latent energy or heat of transformation) is energy released or absorbed, by a body or a thermodynamic system, during a constant-temperature process — usually a first-order phase transition. Latent heat can be underst ...

, energy released or absorbed, by a body or a thermodynamic system, during a constant-temperature process *

Latent variable In statistics, latent variables (from Latin: present participle of ''lateo'', “lie hidden”) are variables that can only be inferred indirectly through a mathematical model from other observable variables that can be directly observed or me ...

, a variable that is not directly observed but inferred in statistics

Biology and medicine

Latency period In epidemiology, particularly in the discussion of infectious disease dynamics (modeling), the latent period (also known as the latency period or the pre-infectious period) is the time interval between when an individual or host is infected by a ...

or latent period, the time between development of a disease or exposure to a pathogen, chemical, or radiation and when symptoms first become apparent (e.g. latent tumor) or when the disease becomes infectious (e.g. infectious disease) *

Latent homosexuality Latent homosexuality is an erotic attraction toward members of the same sex that is not consciously experienced or expressed in overt action. This may mean a hidden inclination or potential for interest in homosexual relationships, which is ei ...

, a term proposed by Sigmund Freud *

Sleep onset latency In sleep science, sleep onset latency (SOL) is the length of time that it takes to accomplish the transition from full wakefulness to sleep, normally to the lightest of the non-REM sleep stages. Sleep latency studies Pioneering Stanford Univers ...

, the time it takes a person to fall asleep *

Virus latency Virus latency (or viral latency) is the ability of a pathogenic virus to lie dormant (latent) within a cell, denoted as the lysogenic part of the viral life cycle. A latent viral infection is a type of persistent viral infection which is disti ...

, the ability of a virus to remain dormant

Engineering

Latency (engineering) Latency, from a general point of view, is a time delay between the cause and the effect of some physical change in the system being observed. Lag, as it is known in gaming circles, refers to the latency between the input to a simulation and ...

, a measure of the time delay experienced by a system **

Latency (audio) Latency refers to a short period of delay (usually measured in milliseconds) between when an audio signal enters a system and when it emerges. Potential contributors to latency in an audio system include analog-to-digital conversion, buffering, ...

, the delay necessitated by the conversion between analog and digital representations of sound data **

CAS latency Column Address Strobe (CAS) latency, or CL, is the delay in clock cycles between the READ command and the moment data is available. In asynchronous DRAM, the interval is specified in nanoseconds (absolute time). In synchronous DRAM, the interval ...

, computer memory latency **

Network latency Network delay is a design and performance characteristic of a telecommunications network. It specifies the Latency (engineering), latency for a bit of data to travel across the network from one communication endpoint to another. It is typically ...

or network delay, a measure of the time delay required for information to travel across a network **

Rotational latency Higher performance in hard disk drives comes from devices which have better performance characteristics. These performance characteristics can be grouped into two categories: access time and data transfer time (or rate). Access time The ''access ...

, the delay waiting for the rotation of the disk to bring the required disk sector under the read-write head ** Mechanical latency

Other uses

Latency stage The latency stage is the fourth stage of Sigmund Freud's model of a child's psychosexual development. Freud believed that the child discharges their libido (sexual energy) through a distinct body area that characterizes each stage. The stages a ...

, a term coined by Sigmund Freud for a stage in a child's psychosexual development *

Latent Recordings Latent Recordings is a Canadian independent record label founded in 1981. It was dormant in the 1990s while the Cowboy Junkies were signed to American labels, but began to release independently produced albums in the 2000s. By the late 2000s, it ...

, an independent Canadian record label *

Nuclear latency Nuclear latency or a nuclear threshold state is the condition of a country possessing the technology to quickly build nuclear weapons, without having actually yet done so. Because such latent capability is not proscribed by the Nuclear Non-Prolifer ...

, the condition of a country capable of developing nuclear weapons but not yet possessing them {{disambiguation