The word length is the cost of building a group element from the allowed generators of a group. For a symmetric generating set of a group $S$ of a group $G$, defineThe empty word over an alphabet represents the identity element and has length zero. A representative with this least number of letters labels a shortest graph path from $1$ to $g$ in the Cayley graph. Thus word length minimizes over all representatives, rather than counting the letters in whichever expression we happened to write down.^[ref]

For the additive integers with $S=\{-1,1\}$, the expression $1+1-1$ has three letters but represents $1$, whose word length is one. With $T=\{-2,-1,1,2\}$, the integer $5$ has word length three, realized by $2+2+1$. The Cayley graphs of the integers visualize why these are minimal. A freely reduced word is always shortest in a free group with its free generators and their inverses; free reduction alone need not give a shortest representative in a general group.

Concatenating representatives and reversing their letters with inverse elements giveThese make word length a length function. A finite $S$ gives finite word metric balls, since only finitely many words over an alphabet have length at most a fixed radius. The definition itself also works for infinite symmetric generating sets of a group; the bounded-metric example in equivalence of finite word metrics shows what finiteness adds.

A tidally enhanced stellar wind is a model in which a companion increases a giant's wind mass loss as the giant approaches its Roche lobe. Removing envelope mass before contact can reduce or reverse the mass ratio and make subsequent Roche-lobe overflow more stable. This is one proposed route to wide systems with Algol-like reversed evolutionary ordering. Van der Sluys's compact-binary study, section 5.7.1 discusses the enhanced-wind scenario and its effect on mass-transfer stability.

A cold nonrelativistic white dwarf supported by electron degeneracy pressure has a polytropic equation of state $P=K_{\mathrm{NR}}{\rho }^{5/3}$, so its polytropic index is $3/2$. The Lane-Emden mass formula and polytropic mass-radius relation give $R\propto K_{\mathrm{NR}}{M}^{-1/3}$ at fixed composition. As density rises, relativistic corrections soften the exponent toward $4/3$ and lead toward the Chandrasekhar mass regime.

A helium white dwarf is a white dwarf whose core is primarily helium. Stripping a low-mass evolved star before helium ignition can produce one on a much shorter timescale than isolated stellar evolution.

A carbon-oxygen white dwarf is a white dwarf whose core is predominantly carbon and oxygen, retained after core helium burning when the star loses its envelope without sustained carbon burning.

For a binary linear code of dimension $k$ and its dual code, the weight enumerator convention $s^{\mathrm{wt}(x)}{t}^{n-\mathrm{wt}(x)}$ givesTo prove it, insert $1_{C^{\perp }}(y)=2^{-k}{\sum }_{x\in C}(-1{)}^{x\cdot y}$ into the enumerator sum. Summing independently over each coordinate of $y$ yields a factor $t+s$ if $x_j=0$ and $t-s$ if $x_j=1$.

The Weierstrass elliptic function is the quotient map from the complex torus by $z\mapsto -z$. An even elliptic function descends through this map; its even Laurent series at each branch point makes the descended function meromorphic there. A meromorphic function on the Riemann sphere is rational, so $f=Q(\wp )$.

A pinch map collapses a separating subspace to a point so that the quotient splits into a wedge sum. For a connected sum of oriented manifolds, collapsing the separating boundary sphere gives a map $M\#N\to M\vee N$. The two wedge projections have degree of a continuous mapping one with compatible orientations. Consequently their pullbacks identify the two top orientation classes, while positive-degree classes from different summands have zero cup product.

Every weakly compact set in a normed vector space is norm bounded, even if the space is incomplete. Its canonical embedding into the bidual is pointwise bounded on the continuous dual space; the Uniform boundedness principle on that Banach dual gives the norm bound.

Coordinate evaluations on the l-infinity sequence space form a countable separating family, so a weakly compact set $K$ is metrizable by countable separating family metrizes a weakly compact set. Choose a countable weakly dense subset $D$. Then $K$ lies in the weak closure of $\mathrm{conv}D$, which equals its norm closure by Mazur theorem. Rational convex combinations make that norm closure separable, and every subset of a separable metric space is separable. The weakly dense subset itself need not be norm dense in a nonconvex $K$.

A linear functional on $X^{\ast }$ is continuous for the weak-star topology exactly when it is evaluation at an element of $X$. Continuity makes it vanish on the common kernel of finitely many evaluations, so it is a linear combination of those evaluations. The canonical embedding into the bidual identifies this dual with $X$.

A countable local base at zero would give countably many finite sets of evaluation vectors. Any other evaluation must lie in the span of one of those finite sets: otherwise a bounded functional vanishing on that set but not on the evaluation vector, supplied by Hahn-Banach theorem, contradicts inclusion of neighbourhoods after scalar rescaling. Thus the predual has countable Hamel dimension, impossible for an infinite-dimensional Banach space by the Baire category theorem. This concerns the entire dual, unlike weak-star metrizability of the dual ball.

For $u_{tt}+L(t)u=f$ with homogeneous Dirichlet boundary conditions, smooth uniformly elliptic principal coefficients, and initial data $({\psi }_0,{\psi }_1)\in H_0^1(U)\times L^2(U)$, a space-time $H^1$ weak solution has zero lateral trace, trace $u(0)={\psi }_0$, and satisfiesfor every space-time $H^1$ test function with zero lateral trace and $v(T)=0$. The velocity initial condition is encoded by the last term; an arbitrary space-time $H^1$ function need not have an $L^2$ trace of its time derivative. The equation itself gives $u_{tt}\in L^2(0,T;H^{-1}(U))$, so $u_t$ has a continuous $H^{-1}$ representative.

A weak-strong uniqueness principle says that a weak solution with the same data as a sufficiently regular classical solution agrees with that solution throughout its interval of regular existence, within the specified weak class. The conclusion is class-dependent: all bounded weak solutions of a prescribed $C^1$ linear transport field satisfy it, while nonlinear conservation laws require an admissibility condition such as an entropy solution condition.

For a weight-$k$ weak modular form of level one,where $(a{)}_r=a(a+1)\cdots (a+r-1)$ and $(a{)}_0=1$. Differentiate and multiply by $z^2$ to obtain the coefficient recurrence $C_{\ell +1,j}=(k+\ell +j)C_{\ell ,j}+C_{\ell ,j-1}$.

If $u\in W_{\mathrm{loc}}^{1,2}$ and $\Phi$ is continuously differentiable with bounded derivative on the range in use, then $D(\Phi (u))={\Phi }^{\prime }(u)Du$ almost everywhere. One proves this first for smooth functions and then uses density of smooth functions in a Sobolev space and boundedness of ${\Phi }^{\prime }$. On compact sets one may truncate $\Phi$ away from the range of a bounded $u$.

A normed vector space has the Radon-Riesz property when weak convergence $u_k\rightharpoonup u$ together with $\Vert u_k\Vert \to \Vert u\Vert$ implies strong convergence $u_k\to u$. The Hilbert-space case is the Radon-Riesz theorem. The condition prevents norm from remaining in weakly invisible directions.

For the massless contact interaction $-(G_F/\sqrt{2})[\bar{d}{\gamma }^{\alpha }(P+Q{\gamma }^5)u][\bar{c}{\gamma }_{\alpha }(P+Q{\gamma }^5)s]$ with real $P,Q$, spin and colour averaging givesThe gamma matrix trace identities give the averaged amplitude $4G_F^2[(C^2+4P^2{Q}^2)(p_2\cdot k_1)(p_1\cdot k_2)+(C^2-4P^2{Q}^2)(p_2\cdot k_2)(p_1\cdot k_1)]$, where $C=P^2+Q^2$. Substitute the massless Mandelstam variables and divide by $64{\pi }^{2}s$. The two singlet colour contractions give factor one after final summation and initial averaging. This is a low-energy Fermi interaction result, not its high-energy extrapolation.

A Shack–Hartmann wavefront sensor divides an incoming beam among a regular array of small optical lenses, each forming a spot on a detector. A locally tilted wavefront displaces the corresponding spot relative to a reference measurement. For lens focal length $f$ and small local tilt $\alpha$, the displacement is approximately $f\alpha$.

If $W(x,y)$ denotes wavefront error as an optical path length in air, the measured displacements approximately give $\Delta x=f\partial W/\partial x$ and $\Delta y=f\partial W/\partial y$. Reconstructing $W$ from these slopes supports adaptive optics. A spatially constant offset in $W$ remains undetermined because it changes neither slope; overlapping or poorly sampled spots also limit reconstruction.

Canonical field normalization rescales a field so that its kinetic term has unit coefficient. For a chiral superfield with $K=Z{\Phi }^{†}\Phi$, the change ${\Phi }_c=Z^{1/2}\Phi$ turns holomorphic superpotential parameters into canonical parameters $m_c=m/Z$ and $g_c=g/Z^{3/2}$.