Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A mathematical function that can be used to generate the equations of motion of a dynamic system, equal for many such systems to the sum of the kinetic and potential energies of the system expressed in terms of the system's coordinates and momenta treated as independent variables.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Pertaining to James Hamilton (1769–1831), and especially to a system of teaching languages which he advocated, and which was based upon the two principles that language is to be presented to the scholar as a living organism, and that its laws are to be learned by observation and not by rules.
  • Pertaining to Sir William Hamilton (1788–1856), an influential philosopher and logician of the Scottish school.
  • Pertaining to Sir William Rowan Hamilton (1805–65), an Irish mathematician.
  • Pertaining to or holding the political doctrines of Alexander Hamilton (1757–1804), an American statesman, who was one of the leaders of the Federalist party and the first Secretary of the Treasury.
  • noun A follower of any one of the persons named above. See I.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A native or inhabitant of any city named Hamilton.
  • adjective mathematics Applied to various mathematical constructs developed or inspired by Hamilton, as in Hamiltonian path, Hamiltonian cycle.
  • noun physics In quantum mechanics, the observable, denoted by H, that corresponds to the total energy of the system.

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[After Sir William Rowan Hamilton, (1805–1865), Irish mathematician.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Hamilton +‎ -ian.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

William Rowan Hamilton (1805-1865), Irish mathematician, +‎ -ian.

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Examples

  • I randomly opened a cupboard today to find some interesting stuff – an old journal paper of Dad’s (Hi Dad!) on Liapunov equations in Hamiltonian systems and a diary from when he was around 15.

    December « 2008 « Sunayana’s Blog 2008

  • I randomly opened a cupboard today to find some interesting stuff – an old journal paper of Dad’s (Hi Dad!) on Liapunov equations in Hamiltonian systems and a diary from when he was around 15.

    Sigh. « Sunayana’s Blog 2008

  • Agreeing with Aaron: once we represent the results of experiments by operators acting on a Hilbert space, time evolution gives a one-parameter group, so by Stone’s theorem there is a self-adjoint operator, which in the case of time evolution we call the Hamiltonian, that generates the group.

    Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Quantum Mechanics, But Were Afraid to Ask Sean 2008

  • (If a Hamiltonian is a sum of polynomially many local terms, then certainly one can simulate it efficiently on a quantum computer — see here for some pointers to the literature.)

    Humankind’s Basic Picture of the Universe Sean 2006

  • For the interaction picture one splits up the Hamiltonian, which is the generator of time-translations, into two parts H = H0

    Quantum Field Theory Kuhlmann, Meinard 2006

  • Because the oscillators are independent, the Hamiltonian is a simple sum: we see that the Hamiltonian of the EM field can be looked upon as a Hamiltonian of independent oscillators of energy ω = |

    Citizendium, the Citizens' Compendium - Recent changes [en] 2009

  • Because the oscillators are independent, the Hamiltonian is a simple sum: we see that the Hamiltonian of the EM field can be looked upon as a Hamiltonian of independent oscillators of energy ω = |

    Citizendium, the Citizens' Compendium - Recent changes [en] 2008

  • Because the oscillators are independent, the Hamiltonian is a simple sum: we see that the Hamiltonian of the EM field can be looked upon as a Hamiltonian of independent oscillators of energy ω = |

    Citizendium, the Citizens' Compendium - Recent changes [en] 2008

  • It smacks of the same kind of Hamiltonian authoritarianism of the global warmers and environmental extremists.

    Meet Tom Reed (R CAND, NY-29). | RedState 2010

  • However, chaotic systems such as Hamiltonian chaotic systems will exhibit a radical divergence of these errors or differences in initial conditions

    Quantum Hyperion Sean 2008

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