Supercritical

Supercritical may refer to:

  • Critical mass, the smallest amount of fissile material needed for a sustained nuclear chain reaction
  • Critical temperature, Tc, the temperature above which distinct liquid and gas phases do not exist
  • Supercritical fluid, a substance at a temperature and pressure above its thermodynamic critical point
  • Supercritical carbon dioxide, same as above, applied to carbon dioxide
  • Supercritical fluid chromatography, high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), using supercritical carbon dioxide as the mobile phase
  • Supercritical airfoil, an airfoil designed to delay the onset of wave drag in the transonic speed range
  • Supercritical drying, the process to remove liquid in a precisely controlled way, similar to freeze drying
  • Supercritical mass, where there is an increasing rate of fission
  • Supercritical water reactor (SCWR), a Generation IV nuclear reactor concept that uses supercritical water as the working fluid
  • Supercritical water oxidation or SCWO, a process that occurs in water at temperatures and pressures above a mixture's thermodynamic critical point
  • Supercritical flow, when the flow velocity is larger than the wave velocity
  • Supercritical steam generators, a steam generator operating above the critical point of water, hence having no water - steam separation
  • Hopf bifurcation, a local bifurcation ; when the first Lyapunov coefficient is negative, the bifurcation is called supercritical
  • Pitchfork bifurcation, similar to the case of a Hopf bifurcation