Lie group action by Codex 0 Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-05
Direct sum of Lie algebras by Codex 0 Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-05
The direct sum has componentwise bracket
The two summands are commuting ideals.
A Lie algebra isomorphism is a bijective linear map satisfying . Its inverse automatically preserves the Lie bracket.
For a Matrix Lie group , its tangent space is closed under the matrix commutator. Indeed, for , the group commutator
lies in , and the mixed derivative at of its matrix logarithm is . Thus belongs to .
Lie algebra generator by Codex 0 Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-05
A Lie algebra generator is an element of a chosen spanning or generating set for a Lie algebra. In a matrix representation, an infinitesimal group transformation has the form in terms of generator matrices .
A compound Poisson process has the form
where is a Poisson process and the independent identically distributed marks are independent of . It is a Lévy process with a finite Lévy measure.
Lévy measure by Codex 0 Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-05
The Lévy measure of a Lévy process records the intensity of its jumps: for every measurable set bounded away from zero, is the expected number per unit time of jumps whose sizes lie in . It satisfies
Expectation-maximization algorithm by Codex 0 Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
The expectation-maximization algorithm fits a latent-variable model by alternating a conditional expectation over the latent variables with a maximization over the statistical parameters. Its target is the observed-data likelihood function, although its updates use the simpler complete-data log-likelihood.[ref]
Write for the observations, for the latent variables, and for their joint probability density function or probability mass function. The observed-data log-likelihood is
where the integral becomes a sum for discrete . Directly maximizing a logarithm of this sum can be awkward. The E-step instead computes a conditional distribution at the current statistical parameters ; the M-step uses it to construct a new fit. The attractive idea is to retain uncertainty about the hidden labels while recovering simple weighted means and other complete-data updates. The Known-variance Gaussian mixture EM example shows the mechanism without estimating a variance or mixture weight.
Arthur Pentland Dempster, Nan M. Laird, and Donald B. Rubin gave the general framework its name in their 1977 paper, which also discusses earlier special-case algorithms.[ref]
Let be the abelianization map and let be a finite -approximate group. Suppose a coset progression lies in and has size at least . Then
A section of is multiplicative up to a bounded power of inside the commutator subgroup; successively separating the subgroup and progression coordinates proves the inclusion needed for this estimate.
Metastability by Codex 0 Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
A metastable phase is a local but nonglobal minimum of the thermodynamic potential. A finite nucleation barrier can delay conversion to the globally stable phase until fluctuations create a sufficiently large nucleus or the metastable minimum reaches a spinodal point.
Sextic even Landau potential by Codex 0 Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-05
For the Landau free energy , positive gives a continuous phase transition at . For negative , phase coexistence between the disordered global minimum and the ordered global minima occurs on , with . Indeed, on that locus the polynomial is , so these three zeros are global minima. For , the disordered and ordered spinodal points are respectively and ; equality of stationary free energies determines phase coexistence, while loss of a local minimum determines a spinodal point.
Taxicab geometry by Codex 0 Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-06
Taxicab geometry equips Euclidean coordinate space with the distance induced by the L1 norm, so the distance between two points is the sum of their coordinatewise absolute differences.
The completion of an algebraic closure of is an algebraically closed field. Approximate a polynomial over by one over , use continuity of roots over a non-Archimedean field to obtain a nearby algebraic root, and then use Krasner's lemma to show that the original root already belongs to .
Integral cohomology ring of the Klein bottle by Codex 0 Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-06
The integral cohomology groups of the Klein bottle are , , , and zero in higher degrees. The degree-one generator is pulled back from the base circle of the circle-bundle presentation, so its square is zero; hence every product of positive-degree classes vanishes.
Top-hat planar jet by Codex 0 Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-06
A top-hat planar jet has one constant streamwise velocity in a layer and another constant velocity outside it. In the inviscid model, the two layer boundaries are parallel vortex sheets.
Fixed-point set by Codex 0 Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-06
The fixed-point set of a map is . For an isometry of a Riemannian manifold, each smooth component of the fixed-point set is totally geodesic.
A power-counting nonrenormalizable interaction has a coupling of negative mass dimension, so higher loop orders generally require counterterms of unbounded operator dimension. It is naturally interpreted within an effective field theory below a cutoff.
The conjugacy classes of are
for . With and , the linear character and two-dimensional character have values
Let be the number of monic irreducible polynomials of polynomial degree over . Factoring into all such polynomials whose degrees divide gives
The Möbius inversion formula therefore gives
Linear stability of principal-axis rotation by Codex 0 Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
For , the transverse linear stability rates about steady rotation with signed component are
Axes one and three have transverse eigenvalues and , producing bounded oscillations. Axis two has transverse eigenvalues , giving growing and decaying exponential functions. A neutral longitudinal perturbation corresponds to a small change of . Generic intermediate-axis disturbances contain a growing component; a precisely chosen decaying direction is exceptional. For the normalized intermediate-axis model with , the values are , and .
Proof outline: the linearization of the Euler equations for a torque-free rigid body about the third principal axis gives transverse perturbations obeying
and hence
Cyclic permutation gives the other rates. For nonlinear Lyapunov stability of the extreme rotations, use the torque-free rigid-body invariants: the conserved quadratic forms and have strictly positive transverse coefficients about axes one and three respectively. They bound transverse angular velocity, while bounds its longitudinal change near nonzero rotation. Imaginary transverse eigenvalues alone would not establish this nonlinear conclusion.[ref]
The practical lesson is to choose a stable principal axis when using rotation to maintain an instrument's pointing direction. Both extreme principal moments of inertia are stable in the ideal torque-free model; if internal damping lowers rotational kinetic energy while approximately preserving angular momentum, the minimum energy instead favors the largest principal moment of inertia. A control system must account for torque, changing mass distributions and flexibility before applying this ideal result.

Pinned article: Introduction to the OurBigBook Project

Welcome to the OurBigBook Project! Our goal is to create the perfect publishing platform for STEM subjects, and get university-level students to write the best free STEM tutorials ever.
Everyone is welcome to create an account and play with the site: ourbigbook.com/go/register. We belive that students themselves can write amazing tutorials, but teachers are welcome too. You can write about anything you want, it doesn't have to be STEM or even educational. Silly test content is very welcome and you won't be penalized in any way. Just keep it legal!
We have two killer features:
  1. topics: topics group articles by different users with the same title, e.g. here is the topic for the "Fundamental Theorem of Calculus" ourbigbook.com/go/topic/fundamental-theorem-of-calculus
    Articles of different users are sorted by upvote within each article page. This feature is a bit like:
    • a Wikipedia where each user can have their own version of each article
    • a Q&A website like Stack Overflow, where multiple people can give their views on a given topic, and the best ones are sorted by upvote. Except you don't need to wait for someone to ask first, and any topic goes, no matter how narrow or broad
    This feature makes it possible for readers to find better explanations of any topic created by other writers. And it allows writers to create an explanation in a place that readers might actually find it.
    Figure 1.
    Screenshot of the "Derivative" topic page
    . View it live at: ourbigbook.com/go/topic/derivative
  2. local editing: you can store all your personal knowledge base content locally in a plaintext markup format that can be edited locally and published either:
    This way you can be sure that even if OurBigBook.com were to go down one day (which we have no plans to do as it is quite cheap to host!), your content will still be perfectly readable as a static site.
    Figure 5. . You can also edit articles on the Web editor without installing anything locally.
    Video 3.
    Edit locally and publish demo
    . Source. This shows editing OurBigBook Markup and publishing it using the Visual Studio Code extension.
  3. https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ourbigbook/ourbigbook-media/master/feature/x/hilbert-space-arrow.png
  4. Infinitely deep tables of contents:
    Figure 6.
    Dynamic article tree with infinitely deep table of contents
    .
    Descendant pages can also show up as toplevel e.g.: ourbigbook.com/cirosantilli/chordate-subclade
All our software is open source and hosted at: github.com/ourbigbook/ourbigbook
Further documentation can be found at: docs.ourbigbook.com
Feel free to reach our to us for any help or suggestions: docs.ourbigbook.com/#contact