Lemniscates
Plane algebraic curves of order such that the product of the distances of each point of the curve from
given points (foci)
is equal to the
-th power of a given number
(the radius of the lemniscate). The equation of a lemniscate in rectangular Cartesian coordinates is
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A circle is a lemniscate with one focus, and a Cassini oval is a lemniscate with two foci. See also Bernoulli lemniscate and Booth lemniscate.
Comments
References
[a1] | F. Gomes Teixeira, "Traité des courbes" , 1–3 , Chelsea, reprint (1971) |
A lemniscate is a level curve of a polynomial. If all the foci :
,
, are distinct and the radius of the lemniscate is sufficiently small, then the lemniscate consists of
continua that have pairwise no common points. For a sufficiently large radius a lemniscate consists of one connected component. As D. Hilbert showed in 1897, the boundary
of an arbitrary simply-connected finite domain can be arbitrarily closely approximated by a lemniscate, that is, for any
one can find a lemniscate
such that in the
-neighbourhood of each point of
there are points of
and every point of
is in the
-neighbourhood of an appropriate point of
.
References
[1] | A.I. Markushevich, "Theory of functions of a complex variable" , 1 , Chelsea (1977) (Translated from Russian) |
[2] | J.L. Walsh, "Interpolation and approximation by rational functions in the complex domain" , Amer. Math. Soc. (1965) |
E.D. Solomentsev
Lemniscates. Encyclopedia of Mathematics. URL: http://encyclopediaofmath.org/index.php?title=Lemniscates&oldid=11912