The term potential function may refer to:
* A mathematical
function
Function or functionality may refer to:
Computing
* Function key, a type of key on computer keyboards
* Function model, a structured representation of processes in a system
* Function object or functor or functionoid, a concept of object-orie ...
, whose values are given by a
scalar potential
In mathematical physics, scalar potential describes the situation where the difference in the potential energies of an object in two different positions depends only on the positions, not upon the path taken by the object in traveling from one p ...
or
vector potential
In vector calculus, a vector potential is a vector field whose curl is a given vector field. This is analogous to a ''scalar potential'', which is a scalar field whose gradient is a given vector field.
Formally, given a vector field \mathbf, a ' ...
* The
electric potential
Electric potential (also called the ''electric field potential'', potential drop, the electrostatic potential) is defined as electric potential energy per unit of electric charge. More precisely, electric potential is the amount of work (physic ...
, in the context of
electrodynamics
In physics, electromagnetism is an interaction that occurs between particles with electric charge via electromagnetic fields. The electromagnetic force is one of the four fundamental forces of nature. It is the dominant force in the interacti ...
, is formally described by both a scalar electrostatic potential and a
magnetic vector potential
In classical electromagnetism, magnetic vector potential (often denoted A) is the vector quantity defined so that its curl is equal to the magnetic field, B: \nabla \times \mathbf = \mathbf. Together with the electric potential ''φ'', the ma ...
* The class of functions known as
harmonic function
In mathematics, mathematical physics and the theory of stochastic processes, a harmonic function is a twice continuously differentiable function f\colon U \to \mathbb R, where is an open subset of that satisfies Laplace's equation, that i ...
s, which are the topic of study in
potential theory
In mathematics and mathematical physics, potential theory is the study of harmonic functions.
The term "potential theory" was coined in 19th-century physics when it was realized that the two fundamental forces of nature known at the time, namely g ...
* The potential function of a
potential game
In game theory, a game is said to be a potential game if the incentive of all players to change their strategy can be expressed using a single global function called the potential function. The concept originated in a 1996 paper by Dov Monderer and ...
* In the
potential method
In computational complexity theory, the potential method is a method used to analyze the amortized time and space complexity of a data structure, a measure of its performance over sequences of operations that smooths out the cost of infrequent but ...
of amortized analysis, a function describing an investment of resources by past operations that can be used by future operations
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