Reference library
Foundations
Explore concepts, laws, equations and methods, with clear explanations of their use and sources. Choose an area of study or find a specific entry.
More filters
Reference entries
Showing 1111–1140 of 1709 reference entries
Different subsurface density structures can yield the same external gravitational field.
MethodEarth & cosmosConductive heat diffusion and a thermal length scaleFor stationary homogeneous material with constant positiveρ,c_p andk, no internal heat production and one-dimensional conduction, ρc_pT_t=kT_zz, with thermal diffusivityκ=k/(ρc_p).
ModelEarth & cosmosSteady geotherm with internal heat productionWith depthz positive downward, constant conductivityk and uniform volumetric heat productionH, a stationary conductive slab obeys kT_zz+H=0.
ModelEarth & cosmosHalf-space cooling of an ideal lithosphereFor z>0 initially at uniform T_i and a surface held at T_s for t>0, constant-κ conduction gives T(z,t)=T_s+(T_i−T_s)erf[z/(2√(κt))].
ModelEarth & cosmosPassive and active Earth-observation signalsPassive sensors receive externally supplied or naturally emitted radiation; active radar/lidar supplies illumination and measures its return.
MethodEarth & cosmosDigital values, TOA radiance and reflectanceFor the specified Landsat Level-1 product, metadata supplies band-specific rescaling L_λ=M_LQ_cal+A_L and uncorrected planetary reflectanceρ′=M_ρQ_cal+A_ρ.
MethodEarth & cosmosThermal brightness temperature and surface-temperature limitsA Landsat thermal-band TOA radianceL_λ>0 maps to product brightness temperature T_B=K₂/ln(K₁/L_λ+1), using its band-specific metadata constants.
MethodEarth & cosmosNDVI as a calibrated spectral ratioFor compatible near-infrared and red surface-reflectance bands, NDVI=(ρ_NIR−ρ_R)/(ρ_NIR+ρ_R).
MethodEarth & cosmosPulse ranging, elevation geometry and a DEMFor a monostatic pulse with corrected round-trip delayτ and constant propagation group speedv_g, one-way slant range is R=v_gτ/2.
MethodEarth & cosmosOcean colour and an empirical chlorophyll retrievalOcean-colour band-ratio models estimate near-surface chlorophyll-a from water-leaving remote-sensing reflectances.
MethodEarth & cosmosResolved fault traction and the Mohr constructionLetΣ be the symmetric compression-positive stress tensor, the negative of tensile-positive Cauchy stress.
MethodEarth & cosmosAndersonian stress regimes and faultingIn an Andersonian idealization, one principal stress axis is vertical and two are horizontal.
ModelEarth & cosmosEnergy balance for brittle crack extensionIn a quasistatic elastic fracture model, crack extension releases mechanical potential energy at rateG=−∂Π/∂A per projected crack area.
ModelEarth & cosmosInduced/remanent magnetization and a total-field anomalyA weak-field linear isotropic rock model separates magnetizationM=M_r+χH into retained remanence and an induced response to localH.
MethodMathematics & logicHigher categories through nerves and inner hornsThe nerve of an ordinary category has n-simplices given by chains of n composable arrows; inner horns have unique fillers encoding composition.
DefinitionMathematics & logicA nonlinear existence theorem: subcritical NLSFor i u-t=−Delta-u−lambda|u|^alpha u on R-n, real lambda and 0<alpha<4/n, every L2 initial datum has a unique local mild solution in C([0,T];L2) intersected with L-q(0,T;L^(alpha+2)), where q=4(alpha+2)/(n alpha).
Mathematical statementInformationDifferential privacy and the protected unitA randomized mechanism is (epsilon,delta)-differentially private if every neighboring dataset pair and every output event obey Pr[M(D) in S]≤exp(epsilon)Pr[M(D-prime) in S]+delta.
DefinitionInformationSensitivity, Laplace noise and compositionFor a vector query with global L1 sensitivity Delta-1, adding independent Laplace noise of scale Delta-1/epsilon to each coordinate gives epsilon-DP under the chosen adjacency.
MethodInformationRényi privacy accounting and conversionFor order alpha>1, RDP bounds the Rényi divergence between mechanism outputs on every adjacent dataset pair by epsilon-alpha.
Mathematical statementInformationAdversarial robustness needs a threat modelA norm-bounded adversarial evaluation asks whether an attacker can change a model's prediction using perturbations within a specified set around an input.
MethodInformationRandomized smoothing: a bounded L2 certificateGaussian smoothing defines a classifier by the most probable prediction of a base classifier under N(0,sigma²I) noise.
Mathematical statementInformationTransformer attention and its modeling objectiveScaled dot-product attention computes softmax(QK-transpose/sqrt(d-k))V, allowing token representations to combine context through learned query/key/value projections.
ModelInformationDiffusion modeling and learned reverse denoisingA DDPM adds Gaussian noise in a forward Markov chain and learns a parameterized reverse process to generate samples.
ModelInformationAutoregressive and diffusion frameworks comparedAn autoregressive model factors a sequence law into conditional next-element distributions, while a diffusion model generates through a learned reverse noise process.
DefinitionInformation2025 contamination-detection study and evaluation limitsSamuel, Zhou and Zou's COLING 2025 study compares five contamination-detection approaches across four language models and eight benchmarks, including a controlled fine-tuning oracle setting.
Empirical findingInformationExact quantum recovery: Knill–Laflamme conditionsA code subspace with projector P exactly corrects a specified span of errors E-a precisely when P E-a† E-b P=c-ab P for every error pair.
Mathematical statementInformationStabilizer codes, CSS structure and code distanceA stabilizer code is the common fixed subspace of an abelian Pauli subgroup excluding minus identity.
DefinitionInformationSurface-code threshold and physical noise assumptionsSurface/toric codes measure local stabilizer checks and infer error chains from syndromes.
ModelInformationFault-tolerant operations and logical resource budgetsFault-tolerant computation must control faults during syndrome extraction, recovery and encoded gates as well as idle storage.
MethodInformationBelow-threshold surface-code memory: measured evidenceGoogle Quantum AI's Nature study, online 9 December 2024 and in the 2025 volume, reports a distance-seven surface-code memory using 101 physical qubits with logical error 0.143%±0.003% per cycle.
Empirical finding