In the calculus of variations, a field of mathematical analysis, the functional derivative (or variational derivative) relates a change in a functional (a functional in this sense is a function that acts on functions) to a change in a function on which the functional depends.
In the calculus of variations, functionals are usually expressed in terms of an integral of functions, their arguments, and their derivatives. In an integrand L of a functional, if a function f is varied by adding to it another function δf that is arbitrarily small, and the resulting integrand is expanded in powers of δf, the coefficient of δf in the first order term is called the functional derivative.
For example, consider the functional
where f ′(x) ≡ df/dx. If f is varied by adding to it a function δf, and the resulting integrand L(x, f +δf, f '+δf ′) is expanded in powers of δf, then the change in the value of J to first order in δf can be expressed as follows:
where the variation in the derivative, δf ′ was rewritten as the derivative of the variation (δf) ′, and integration by parts was used in these derivatives.
In this section, the functional differential (or variation or first variation) Called first variation in , variation or first variation in , variation or differential in and differential in . is defined. Then the functional derivative is defined in terms of the functional differential.
Suppose is a Banach space and is a functional defined on .
The differential of at a point is the linear functional on defined by the condition that, for all ,
where is a real number that depends on in such a way that as . This means that is the Fréchet derivative of at .
However, this notion of functional differential is so strong it may not exist, and in those cases a weaker notion, like the Gateaux derivative is preferred. In many practical cases, the functional differential is defined as the directional derivative
Note that this notion of the functional differential can even be defined without a norm.
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In physics, action is a scalar quantity describing how a physical system has changed over time (its dynamics). Action is significant because the equations of motion of the system can be derived through the principle of stationary action. In the simple case of a single particle moving with a constant velocity (uniform linear motion), the action is the momentum of the particle times the distance it moves, added up along its path; equivalently, action is twice the particle's kinetic energy times the duration for which it has that amount of energy.
In physics, Lagrangian mechanics is a formulation of classical mechanics founded on the stationary-action principle (also known as the principle of least action). It was introduced by the Italian-French mathematician and astronomer Joseph-Louis Lagrange in his 1788 work, Mécanique analytique. Lagrangian mechanics describes a mechanical system as a pair consisting of a configuration space and a smooth function within that space called a Lagrangian. For many systems, where and are the kinetic and potential energy of the system, respectively.
In mathematics, a functional (as a noun) is a certain type of function. The exact definition of the term varies depending on the subfield (and sometimes even the author). In linear algebra, it is synonymous with linear forms, which are linear mappings from a vector space into its field of scalars (that is, they are elements of the dual space ) In functional analysis and related fields, it refers more generally to a mapping from a space into the field of real or complex numbers.
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