Mathematical Physics

Mathematical physics refers to development of mathematical methods for application to problems in physics. The Journal of Mathematical Physics defines the field as "the application of mathematics to problems in physics and the development of mathematical methods suitable for such applications and for the formulation of physical theories". It is a branch of applied mathematics, but deals with physical problems.

There are several distinct branches of mathematical physics, and these roughly correspond to particular historical periods.

The rigorous, abstract and advanced re-formulation of Newtonian mechanics adopting the Lagrangian mechanics and the Hamiltonian mechanics even in the presence of constraints. Both formulations are embodied in analytical mechanics. It leads, for instance, to discover the deep interplay of the notion of symmetry and that of conserved quantities during the dynamical evolution, stated within the most elementary formulation of Noether's theorem. These approaches and ideas can be and, in fact, have been extended to other areas of physics as statistical mechanics, continuum mechanics, classical field theory and quantum field theory. Moreover, they have provided several examples and basic ideas in differential geometry (e.g. the theory of vector bundles and several notions in symplectic geometry).

The theory of partial differential equations (and the related areas of variational calculus, Fourier analysis, potential theory, and vector analysis) are perhaps most closely associated with mathematical physics. These were developed intensively from the second half of the eighteenth century (by, for example, D'Alembert, Euler, and Lagrange) until the 1930s. Physical applications of these developments include hydrodynamics, celestial mechanics, continuum mechanics, elasticity theory, acoustics, thermodynamics, electricity, magnetism, and aerodynamics.

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