In the isolated model, conservation of energy and angular momentum conservation reduce the exterior test particle's motion to
Here is specific orbital energy and is specific angular momentum. The effective potential is . A zero radial velocity is a radial turning point, and need not mean zero total speed: at the periapsis or apoapsis of a nonradial Kepler orbit, tangential velocity remains. Thus the vertical gap between and represents total kinetic energy per unit mass, whereas the gap above represents its radial part.
For , the orbital eccentricity obeys . Negative gives an elliptic orbit, including a circular orbit at its minimum allowed energy; zero gives a parabolic trajectory; positive gives a hyperbolic Kepler orbit. The effective potential tends to zero from below at infinity, so its outer region creates no extra positive escape barrier. This explains why escape velocity depends on energy even though angular momentum changes the path. The case is radial motion, rather than a nondegenerate parabola or hyperbola; inward radial motion can end in collision.
A balanced Dirichlet hyperbola method split takes real thresholds . An asymmetric split takes and . Every lattice point with then has or , and every point in their overlap rectangle is allowed because . For arithmetic functions , define their partial sums by and , always over positive integers. The same inclusion-exclusion principle, now with weight , yields
No multiplicativity assumption is needed: this is a finite rearrangement of Dirichlet convolution. The constant-one arithmetic function in both positions recovers the divisor summatory function. For , , gives
It uses two columns and six rows, with a twelve-point overlap.
For general positive real thresholds, is sufficient for coverage, since and would imply . If , however, the overlap can include points above the hyperbola. The correct subtraction is then ; the product is justified only when the whole integer rectangle lies below it. For example, , covers every allowed pair, but its rectangle contains the forbidden pair , so subtracting all sixteen points would give instead of .
Conversely, the balanced integer thresholds have and still cover every allowed pair because . More generally, positive integer thresholds give coverage exactly when , and their overlap is a full rectangle exactly when . These discrete conditions explain why the square-root identity works even when .
Asymptote 2026-10-14
An asymptote of an unbounded curve is a straight line whose distance from the curve tends to zero along a specified end. For a graph, a sloping asymptote satisfies as tends to the relevant infinity. Factorization of the leading quadratic part locates the two asymptotes of a nondegenerate hyperbola.
Boyle's law 2026-10-14
Boyle's law states that a fixed amount of substance of an ideal gas at constant absolute thermodynamic temperature has constant product of absolute pressure and total volume:
Here is measured relative to a vacuum, not relative to the surrounding atmospheric pressure. Halving the volume doubles the absolute pressure; doubling the volume halves it. A real gas approximately follows Boyle's law when it is sufficiently dilute and far from a phase transition.[ref]
For an original calculated example, suppose a sealed gas sample has and . After isothermal compression to ,
Both states have , since . The volume ratio is dimensionless, so using the same volume units in numerator and denominator leaves the pressure in kilopascals. Although has units of energy, its value is not the compression work: isothermal ideal-gas work involves an integral along the path.
Figure 1.
Boyle's law: a pressure-volume curve becomes a straight line against reciprocal volume
. Details.
The blue curves show calculated ideal gas states, not measurements. The left panel is a branch of a hyperbola; the right panel plots exactly the same absolute pressures against . The dashed line uses gauge pressure with a stipulated constant atmospheric pressure of . Its displaced intercept explains why absolute pressure in Boyle's law matters.
A short derivation starts from the ideal gas law, . Fixing the amount of substance and absolute thermodynamic temperature fixes , where is the molar gas constant. The microscopic picture in ideal gas pressure from wall collisions is equally appealing: at fixed temperature, the typical particle kinetic energy stays fixed, while compression increases the number density and wall momentum transfer per unit surface area and time. A larger absolute pressure follows without requiring hotter particles.
The constraints are essential. A leak changes the amount of substance. Rapid compression can raise the temperature before heat transfer restores thermal equilibrium, as in the isothermal gas syringe experiment. Molecular size and interactions in a dense real gas invalidate the ideal gas approximation; the Van der Waals equation describes one such correction. Equal endpoint temperatures allow an endpoint test of Boyle's law, but do not establish that every intervening state lies on an isothermal process.
For fixed mass , mass density satisfies , so it is proportional to absolute pressure. In a dilute bubbly flow, Boyle's law allows bubble volume and its contribution to buoyancy to increase as hydrostatic pressure decreases, provided gas mass is retained, dissolution is negligible, and the temperature stays approximately fixed. Its usefulness is that a simple ratio predicts a substantial size change without tracking individual molecules.
Conic section Created 2026-10-05 Updated 2026-10-20
A conic section is obtained by intersecting a plane with a double circular cone. Cuts away from the vertex produce an ellipse, a parabola or a hyperbola; a perpendicular cut is the circle case of an ellipse. A cut through the vertex can instead produce a degenerate conic. One simple surface therefore connects several familiar plane curves.[ref]
Consider the original family
Substituting the plane equation into the double circular cone equation gives
Thus gives a circle, an ellipse, a parabola, and a hyperbola. The last cut meets both sheets of the double circular cone, producing its two branches. These parameters specify a mathematical family, rather than measurements of a physical object.
Figure 1. . Original three-dimensional intersections of with . The cone meshes and planes are finite displayed patches. The circle can look elliptical in the perspective view; its intrinsic geometry is circular. Details.
The Cartesian coordinate system descriptions of these curves are second-degree equations
A rotation and a translation expose their principal directions and offsets. The conic type discriminant identifies the ordinary nondegenerate real type, while a separate degenerate conic check prevents confusing two crossing straight lines with a hyperbola.
This is useful because a difficult-looking equation can be understood through a small set of geometric features: foci of a conic, directrices of a conic, eccentricity of a conic and the semi-major and semi-minor axes. The same ellipse can be traced by a constant-length string or parametrized by , . These are different descriptions of one curve, with different advantages for construction and calculation.
Conic type discriminant Created 2026-10-18 Updated 2026-10-25
For a second-degree equation , the number is the discriminant of a binary quadratic form associated with its quadratic part. For a nonempty, nondegenerate real conic section, a negative value gives an ellipse, zero a parabola, and a positive value a hyperbola. It is invariant under a rotation of orthonormal coordinates.[ref]
A short explanation uses the symmetric matrix
An orthogonal matrix changes this matrix to , whose determinant equals . The spectral theorem for real symmetric matrices then removes the mixed term. Equal-sign, opposite-sign and one-zero eigenvalues give the three types after the remaining linear terms and offsets are considered.
The qualification matters. The equations , and describe a point, a repeated straight line, and two crossing straight lines, respectively. Their quadratic discriminants have the signs expected of ellipse, parabola and hyperbola types, but all three are degenerate conics. Also, has an empty set of real solutions despite its negative quadratic discriminant.
Curl Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-14
The curl of has components
For a continuously differentiable vector field in three-dimensional Euclidean space, the component of its curl along a unit normal vector is the limiting circulation per unit area around a small loop in the perpendicular plane. The loop direction and the normal obey the right-hand rule. Stokes theorem gives the corresponding relation for a finite surface.
For the rigidly rotating velocity field , direct differentiation gives . A circle of radius has tangential speed and circumference , so its circulation is , twice the angular velocity times the enclosed area. The factor of two distinguishes vorticity from rigid-body angular velocity.
Curved integral curves alone do not demonstrate nonzero curl. The field has zero curl, yet its trajectories satisfy , and hence : away from the axes they are hyperbolas. The curl measures local circulation of the field, not the curvature of an individual trajectory.
Dirichlet hyperbola method Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-14
The Dirichlet hyperbola method turns a long summation over a Dirichlet convolution into two short ones by covering the lattice points below a hyperbola with two overlapping strips. Its simplest application is an exact count: for a positive integer , every positive integer divisor of corresponds to the ordered pair . Thus the divisor summatory function counts precisely the ordered pairs of positive integers with :
Here is the divisor function, and the floor function gives the number of allowed values of for each . The axes are excluded, while points on are included.
Set , using the floor function and the positive square root. Every counted pair has or . Otherwise . The first strip contains points; swapping the two coordinates gives the same count for the second. Their overlap contains all pairs with , since . The inclusion-exclusion principle therefore gives the exact identity
The subtraction is for the whole overlap square, rather than only the diagonal. The same Dirichlet hyperbola method identity holds for real , with and . [ref]
Figure 1.
The Dirichlet hyperbola method counts 35 positive lattice points with : two strips of 22 points overlap in a square of nine points
. Details.
Eccentricity of a conic Created 2026-10-07 Updated 2026-10-20
The parameter in a focus-centred polar coordinates equation for a conic section. It distinguishes an ellipse (), a parabola (), and a hyperbola ().
For a noncircular conic section, the eccentricity of a conic is the constant ratio
where is a focus of a conic, the corresponding directrix of a conic, and a point on the curve. For an ellipse with semi-major axis and distance from the focal midpoint to either focus of a conic, . Its circle case has ; a finite directrix does not give that circle through the displayed ratio. The circle is the limit as and its directrices of a conic move arbitrarily far away.
The eccentricity of a conic is intrinsic to the cutting plane, and is not generally its slope in a chosen three-dimensional drawing. For the family in conic section, with , completing the square gives
A displacement along this plane has Euclidean norm . Thus the intrinsic semiaxis ratio satisfies , giving
For , this is , rather than . This normalization separates the curve's geometry from a distorted projection of it onto the plane.
Focal-distance identity for a hyperbola Created 2026-10-18 Updated 2026-10-20
For , let and place the foci of a conic at . On the right branch write , . Direct expansion gives
Since , both square roots are positive and . On the reflected left branch the signed difference reverses, while its absolute value stays . This proves the constant-difference characterization of a hyperbola and keeps track of which branch a hyperbolic function parametrization covers.
Hermitian form Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-14
A Hermitian form is a sesquilinear form on a complex vector space satisfying conjugate symmetry,
Hence is a real number for every vector. In a basis, the matrix of a Hermitian form has and obeys , equivalently : it is a Hermitian matrix. The coordinate rule remains . Conjugate symmetry does not imply positivity.[ref]
The diagonal contains more information than might be expected. For any complex sesquilinear form , put . Expanding four expressions gives the complex polarization identity in the linear-first convention:
This is an algebraic identity, with no positivity assumption. If every is real, interchanging preserves the first difference and negates the second: use for . The identity then gives . Thus a complex sesquilinear form is a Hermitian form if and only if all its diagonal values are real. Testing only the basis vectors is insufficient: the off-diagonal example in sesquilinear form has zero diagonal entries in its matrix but a nonreal value at .
Consider the indefinite Hermitian form
Its values at are . Moreover and are nonzero isotropic vectors: , yet . These vectors do not belong to the radical of a Hermitian form, and the usual Cauchy-Schwarz inequality would incorrectly require . An indefinite Hermitian form records signed geometry rather than defining a norm by .
There is a separate boundary case: is a positive semidefinite Hermitian form, since , but . Its radical of a Hermitian form is the entire second coordinate line. Positive definiteness is exactly the additional condition in a Hermitian inner product. The three examples below show why these distinctions matter: on the real slice , has an ellipse as its unit level, has hyperbolas, and has two parallel lines. These are slices of the complex examples, not drawings of their full four-dimensional domains.
Figure 1.
Analytical illustration: real slices of positive definite, indefinite, and positive semidefinite Hermitian forms
. Details.
Hyperbola Created 2026-10-05 Updated 2026-10-18
A hyperbola is a conic section with two unbounded branches. In suitable coordinates its equation is with . The unit hyperbola is parametrized by , on its right branch, relating it to the hyperbolic functions.
For example, has foci of a conic at , because . Its focal-distance difference has absolute value , while its eccentricity of a conic is . At the point , the focal distances are and , verifying that difference. The asymptotes are ; a distant point approaches those directions while remaining on one of the two branches. The focal-distance difference, rather than a constant sum, distinguishes this hyperbola from an ellipse.
For two distinct intersecting straight lines through the origin, with independent real linear equations and , the nondegenerate centred hyperbolas having exactly those asymptotes are
Indeed, the homogeneous quadratic form of a centred hyperbola vanishes in its two asymptotic directions and hence is a nonzero scalar multiple of . Its equation has no linear terms because the origin is its centre, and its constant term is nonzero by nondegeneracy. Conversely, the invertible linear transformation takes the displayed curve to , a hyperbola, and its ends approach or . Distinct values of give disjoint level sets. In particular, the rectangular hyperbolas with asymptotes are , .
Hyperbolic angle 2026-10-14
A hyperbolic angle is twice the signed area enclosed by the two rays from the origin to and and the intervening arc of the unit hyperbola. Counterclockwise traversal is positive: gives an ordinary area above the horizontal axis, and gives signed area below it. This parallels the unit circle, whose sector has area for an angle measured in radians.
To check the area interpretation, write and . Green's theorem expresses the signed area as a line integral; the straight radial edges contribute zero, leaving
Thus is an area parameter, rather than the ordinary angle of the ray. For , that ordinary angle is ; it stays below even as the hyperbolic angle grows without bound.
Hyperbolic cosine Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-14
The hyperbolic cosine is the even function
It has derivative and second derivative , so it is a strictly convex function. Its unique global minimum is , and its image is . For example, . On the unit hyperbola, the hyperbolic cosine is the horizontal coordinate; as a graph against , it is a symmetric bowl.
Its Taylor series begins
The positive fourth-order term explains why the bowl resembles a parabola near its minimum yet differs from one away from it. Restricting to gives the inverse hyperbolic cosine.
Hyperbolic cylinder 2026-10-18
For , this quadric surface is independent of its third coordinate and is formed by translating a hyperbola along that direction. Its two connected components correspond to and . In elliptic cylindrical coordinates, fixing a generic angular coordinate selects a half-branch of such a cylinder because the signs of both planar coordinates are fixed by that angular value.
Hyperbolic function Created 2026-10-05 Updated 2026-10-14
Hyperbolic functions combine the exponential function to describe a hyperbola much as trigonometric functions describe a circle. Their two basic members are the hyperbolic cosine and hyperbolic sine, defined for every real number by
Their derivatives exchange the two functions:
These formulas follow by applying differentiation to the exponential function definitions. [ref]
Adding and subtracting gives and . Multiplying these equalities proves the hyperbolic Pythagorean identity:
Consequently the parametric equation traverses the entire right branch of the unit hyperbola , where . For example, gives , while gives approximately . Compare on the unit circle, where the squared coordinates add to one. The minus sign changes the geometry from a closed circle to an unbounded hyperbola.
Figure 1.
Hyperbolic cosine and sine become the coordinates of the right branch of a unit hyperbola
. The same inputs are marked on both function graphs and the unit hyperbola. The shaded region has area and corresponds to hyperbolic angle . Details.
The other members are ratios and reciprocals: hyperbolic tangent is , hyperbolic cotangent is , and hyperbolic secant is ; denominators must be nonzero. The hyperbolic sine and hyperbolic cosine both solve the second-order linear differential equation . In fact has and , making this basis convenient for an initial value problem. Their geometry also makes hyperbolic substitution useful for integrals containing , and the hyperbolic cosine gives the physical catenary of a hanging chain.
In units , constant signed proper acceleration gives
Position data determine but leave the initial rapidity free. Proper-acceleration magnitude alone also leaves its orientation unspecified. The familiar centred hyperbola follows for the additional initial data , , and acceleration toward increasing .
Hyperbolic orbit 2026-10-25
An unbound Kepler orbit under attractive inverse-square law gravity is a hyperbola with the attracting center at a focus of a conic. Writing and for angular momentum per unit mass, its eccentricity satisfies , where is the specific orbital energy. A nonzero incoming speed at infinity gives .
Hyperbolic sine Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-14
The hyperbolic sine is the odd function
Its derivative is , so it increases strictly from to and is a bijection of onto itself. For example, , , and . It is the vertical coordinate on the unit hyperbola parametrized by .
The Taylor series
shows that near zero. Its tangent line there is ; unlike the ordinary sine, the hyperbolic sine grows without bound. Its antiderivative is . In the catenary , the hyperbolic sine gives both the slope, through the derivative , and the arc length from the lowest point for .