Canonical
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Canonical may refer to:
Science and technology
- Canonical form, a natural unique representation of an object, or a preferred notation for some object
Mathematics
- Canonical coordinates, sets of coordinates that can be used to describe a physical system at any given point in time
- Canonical map, a morphism that is uniquely defined by its main property
- Canonical polyhedron, a polyhedron whose edges are all tangent to a common sphere, whose center is the average of its vertices
- Canonical ring, a graded ring associated to an algebraic variety
- Canonical representative, in set theory a standard member of each element of a set partition
Differential geometry
- Canonical one-form, a special 1-form defined on the cotangent bundle T*M of a manifold M
- Canonical symplectic form, the exterior derivative of this form
- Canonical vector field, the corresponding special vector field defined on the tangent bundle TM of a manifold M
Physics
- Canonical ensemble, in statistical mechanics, is a statistical ensemble representing a probability distribution of microscopic states of the system
- Canonical quantum gravity, an attempt to quantize the canonical formulation of general relativity
- Canonical stress–energy tensor, a conserved current associated with translations through space and time
- Canonical theory, a unified molecular theory of physics, chemistry, and biology
- Canonical conjugate variables, pairs of variables mathematically defined in such a way that they become Fourier transform duals
- Canonical transformation, in Hamiltonian mechanics
Computing
- Canonical Huffman code, a particular type of Huffman code with unique properties which allow it to be described in a very compact manner
- Canonical link element, an HTML element that helps webmasters prevent duplicate content issues by specifying the “canonical” or “preferred” version
- Canonical model, a design pattern used to communicate between different data formats
- Canonical name record (CNAME record), a type of Domain Name System record
- Canonical S-expressions, a binary encoding form of a subset of general S-expression
- Canonical XML, a normal form of XML, intended to allow relatively simple comparison of pairs of XML documents
- MAC address (formerly canonical number), a unique identifier assigned to network interfaces for communications on the physical network segment
Chemistry
- Canonical form (chemistry), any of a set of representations of the resonance structure of a molecule each of which contributes to the real structure
Religion
- Canon law of the Catholic Church, the system of laws and legal principles made and enforced by the hierarchical authorities of the Catholic Church
- Canonical coronation, an institutional act of the pope to legally crown images venerated by the faithful through a papal bull
- Canonical hours, the divisions of the day in terms of periods of fixed prayer at regular intervals.
- Biblical canon
- Canonical gospel, the four gospels accepted as part of the New Testament
- Canonical criticism, a way of interpreting the Bible that focuses on the text of the biblical canon itself as a finished product
- The scriptures of the Pāli Canon, of Theravāda Buddhism (these include the Sutta Pitaka, the Vinaya Pitaka and the Abhidhamma Pitaka)
Other uses
- Canonical (company), a UK software company, developer of Ubuntu
See also
- Grand canonical ensemble, a probability distribution of microscopic states for an open system, which is being maintained in thermodynamic equilibrium
- Microcanonical ensemble, a theoretical tool used to analyze an isolated thermodynamic system
- Canonical injection, in set theory
- Archetype, in behavior, modern psychological theory, and literary analysis
- Canon (disambiguation)
- Canonicalization, a process for converting data to canonical form
- Canonization, the act of a pope's declaring a deceased person a saint