The celestial equator is the great circle perpendicular to the rotation axis of Earth; declination measures angular displacement from it.

The celestial poles are the two intersections of the rotation axis of Earth with the celestial sphere. The northern pole has declination $+90^{\circ }$.

An observer’s celestial meridian is the great circle containing the zenith and the celestial poles. Its upper half passes through the local north and south directions.

For a central-force radial energy equation, choose a monotone radius $q=q(r)$ and clock $\tau$ such that $d\tau /dt=(q/r)dq/dr$. Then $q^{\prime }=(r/q)\dot{r}$, and multiplying the old energy equation by $r^2/q^2$ preserves the centrifugal form $L^2/(2q^2)$. A split of the remaining terms into constant energy and a new Newtonian gravitational potential produces a transformed radial orbit.

The causal future of $S$ consists of points reached from $S$ by future-directed causal curves, including points of $S$ itself. In a globally hyperbolic spacetime, the causal future of a compact set is closed.

The causal past is the time-reversed causal future. Relative to a specified component ${\mathcal{I}}^{+}$ of future null infinity, the black hole region is the complement of its causal past: $\mathcal{B}=\mathcal{M}\setminus J^{-}({\mathcal{I}}^{+})$.

A causal curve has an everywhere nonspacelike tangent of consistent time orientation; its smooth segments are timelike or null. More generally, curves with local Lipschitz continuity and future causal tangent almost everywhere are allowed. The causal future and causal past are defined by reachability along these curves.

A time orientation is a continuous choice of future cone throughout a time-orientable spacetime. A continuous nonzero timelike vector field supplies such a choice. For metric signature $(-,+,+,+)$, a nonzero causal vector $Z$ is future-directed relative to a future timelike $W$ exactly when $g(W,Z)<0$.

If $a\ne b$ and $x\cdot a=A$, $x\cdot b=B$, the Cauchy-Schwarz inequality applied to $x\cdot (a-b)=A-B$ gives $\Vert x\Vert \ge |A-B|/\Vert a-b\Vert$. Equality requires $x$ parallel to $a-b$ and satisfying both original equations. The estimate gives a lower bound on the distance from the origin to the intersection; it need not be sharp if that equality condition is incompatible with the constraints.

For a continuously differentiable function on a bounded planar domain, the Cauchy-Pompeiu formula supplements the Cauchy integral formula with an area integral of its Wirtinger derivative. Apply the Generalized Stokes theorem to $f(\zeta )d\zeta /(\zeta -z)$ on a punctured domain; the small-circle integral supplies $2\pi if(z)$. If the boundary term vanishes at infinity, it gives the Cauchy-Green operator representation $f(z)={\pi }^{-1}\int f_{\bar{\zeta }}(\zeta )/(z-\zeta )dA$.

An object $I$ is injective when every morphism $A\to I$ extends across every monomorphism $A\hookrightarrow B$ to a morphism $B\to I$. This is the categorical extension property of an injective module or an injective sheaf; it is dual to the lifting property of a projective object in a category.

The category of groups has groups as objects and group homomorphisms as morphisms. Its product is the direct product of groups, and its coproduct is the free product, as expressed by the universal property of a free product.

A category equipped with a monoidal tensor product, a monoidal unit object, and natural associators and unitors satisfying the pentagon and triangle axioms.

A complete and cocomplete category with designated model weak equivalences, model fibrations and model cofibrations, closed under retracts. Weak equivalences satisfy two-out-of-three; maps admit the two cofibration/fibration factorizations, and either acyclic class has the required lifting property against the opposite class. These axioms organize homotopy-theoretic calculations abstractly.

A map $p$ has the right lifting property against $i:A\to B$ when every commutative square with $i$ on the left and $p$ on the right has a diagonal $B\to \mathrm{dom}p$ making both triangles commute. Lifting against a family of maps gives a class of right-injective maps.

A coherent category has finite limits, pullback-stable regular-epi/mono image factorizations, and finite unions of subobjects stable under pullback. Each subobject lattice is distributive. These structures interpret all constructors of coherent logic.

The electromagnetic four-potential has a vanishing temporal momentum and a Gauss law constraint in gauge theory. Gauge reduction leaves two transverse canonical pairs. Their canonical commutation relations give the photon creation and annihilation operators. Covariant Gupta-Bleuler quantization instead retains auxiliary polarization modes and selects the same physical state space by a subsidiary condition and null-state quotient.

Weyl ordering symmetrizes position and momentum factors in a classical polynomial before promoting them to an operator. Its phase-space symbol corresponds to midpoint time slicing of a phase-space path integral. In particular, the Weyl symbol of $a^{†}a$ is $\bar{\psi }\psi -1/2$, whereas its normal ordering symbol is $\bar{\psi }\psi$.

A variational problem seeks a stationary point or minimizer of a functional on a specified function space. For a symmetric coercive bilinear form $a$ and bounded linear functional $\ell$ on a real Hilbert space, minimizing $J(v)=a(v,v)/2-\ell (v)$ is equivalent to the weak formulation $a(u,v)=\ell (v)$ for every test vector. The Lax-Milgram theorem gives a unique solution, and $J(u+w)-J(u)=a(w,w)/2$ proves unique minimization. Specifying the admissible space and its boundary constraints is part of the problem.

Relativistic kinetic theory describes particles by a scalar phase-space distribution function on the future mass shell. Its Boltzmann equation uses geodesic streaming and a collision operator. Integrating its momentum moments supplies a kinetic stress-energy tensor and particle-number currents. An orthonormal tetrad makes the local momentum integrals identical in form to those of special relativity.