Symmetric gauge Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-09-24
For a constant magnetic field,
is the symmetric gauge.
Landau levels in crossed electric and magnetic fields Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-09-24
A uniform electric field perpendicular to a uniform magnetic field shifts each cyclotron oscillator's guiding centre and makes its energy depend linearly on the conserved momentum. The formerly degenerate Landau levels therefore become tilted bands.
Spin splitting of Landau levels Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-09-24
For a spin-one-half particle with the Pauli magnetic term and gyromagnetic factor two, the orbital energies split into and . The lowest level has one spin branch; every positive level has two.
Degeneracy of a Landau level Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-14
In a planar region of area , each spinless Landau level has guiding-centre degeneracy
Magnetic periodic boundary conditions require this flux count to be an integer.
Cyclotron frequency Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-14
A particle of charge and mass in a uniform magnetic field of magnitude has cyclotron angular frequency .
Magnetic minimal coupling Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-14
For a particle of charge in a vector potential , the canonical momentum in the free Hamiltonian is replaced by , giving
Similarity scaling of a two-dimensional laminar plume Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-09-24
If , balancing the momentum flux and transverse viscosity gives
Integral momentum-flux balance for a two-dimensional plume Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-09-24
For a steady incompressible plume with localized vertical body force , decay of velocity and shear at transverse infinity gives
Conservation of energy from time-translation invariance Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-03
A Lagrangian with no explicit time dependence conserves .
Small oscillation Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-14
Near a stable equilibrium, retaining quadratic Lagrangian terms gives a linear system .
The resulting linearized motion decomposes into normal modes near the stable equilibrium.
Kinetic energy from Cartesian position vectors Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-09-24
For point masses with generalized coordinates, kinetic energy follows by differentiating their Cartesian position vectors and summing .
Double pendulum Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-18
A double pendulum consists of two pendula coupled because the second pivot moves with the first mass. It has two degrees of freedom: even when the upper pivot is fixed, moving the upper arm carries the lower pivot along. This makes the double pendulum a compact example of how mechanical constraints couple motion, and how Lagrangian mechanics converts geometry into dynamics.
Use two equal point masses and two massless rigid rods of equal length , with joints that allow free rotation in one vertical plane. The upper pivot is fixed; gravity is uniform, with gravitational acceleration . Neglect joint friction and drag force. Both angles are measured from the downward vertical, positive toward the right, in radians. In particular, is an absolute angle, not the bend between the rods: that bend is .
Figure 1.
Equal point masses and massless rods: both angles are measured from the downward vertical
. Original diagram of the ideal double pendulum. Dashed vertical lines are the separate references for and ; the lower position vector is the sum of the two rod vectors. The drawn angles illustrate geometry, rather than the small-angle approximation. Details.
The double pendulum Lagrangian below gives the exact dynamics of this ideal model. Near the downward stable equilibrium, normal modes of a double pendulum replace the coupled motion with two independent harmonic oscillators. Their fixed amplitude ratios explain which releases make the rods swing together and which make them swing in opposite directions.
Axially symmetric isotropic-mass Lagrangian Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-09-24
If and depends only on and , then rotations about the axis leave invariant. The quantity supplied by Noether theorem is the axial angular momentum
If also has no explicit time dependence, the energy is conserved independently.
Conserved quantities from cyclic coordinates Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-03
If a Lagrangian is independent of a coordinate, the conjugate momentum to that coordinate is conserved by the Euler--Lagrange equations.
Generalized momentum Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-14
The generalized, or conjugate, momentum associated with a coordinate is
In Lagrangian mechanics, the coordinate variable describes the configuration; its conjugate momentum need not equal the Cartesian mechanical momentum.
Charged-particle electromagnetic Lagrangian Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-09-24
For electromagnetic scalar and vector potentials and ,
With
the Euler--Lagrange equations give the Lorentz force , while the canonical momentum is .
Total-time-derivative invariance of a Lagrangian Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-09-24
Replacing a Lagrangian by
adds only the endpoint term to the action. Fixed-endpoint variations therefore give the same Euler--Lagrange equations.
Action Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-14
The action of a path is the time integral of its Lagrangian. The principle of stationary action requires its first variation to vanish for every admissible fixed-endpoint variation.
Weighted open-box minimization Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-09-24
For a topless rectangular box with dimensions , volume , and weighted face cost
an interior optimum equalizes the three terms:
The same result and global minimality follow from the arithmetic-geometric mean inequality.
Derivative of a constrained value function Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-06
For
suppose the optimizer and multiplier vary smoothly and use . Differentiating the optimum value and using stationarity gives

There are unlisted articles, also show them or only show them.