energy functional
nounA special math rule that gives a number telling how much energy a shape or setup has.
The scientist used an energy functional to find the shape with the lowest energy.
OTHER MEANINGS
2. In physics, a mathematical expression that describes the total energy of a system in terms of its state.
The energy functional of the field includes both kinetic and potential terms.
3. In density functional theory, a functional of the electron density that gives the energy of a many-electron system.
They approximated the exchange-correlation energy functional to compute molecular energies.
4. A mapping from configurations to real numbers used to find stable equilibrium states by minimization.
Minimizing the energy functional yielded the equilibrium configuration of the membrane.