Effective Potential - Definition

Definition

The effective potential is defined in the following way:

L is the angular momentum
r is the distance between the two masses
m is the mass of the orbiting body
U(r) is the general form of the potential

The effective force, then, is the negative gradient of the effective potential:

\begin{align}
\mathbf{F}_\text{eff} &= -\nabla U_\text{eff}(\mathbf{r}) \\ &= \frac{L^2}{mr^3}\hat{\mathbf{r}} - \nabla U(\mathbf{r})
\end{align}

Where denotes a unit vector in the radial direction.

Read more about this topic:  Effective Potential

Famous quotes containing the word definition:

    Beauty, like all other qualities presented to human experience, is relative; and the definition of it becomes unmeaning and useless in proportion to its abstractness. To define beauty not in the most abstract, but in the most concrete terms possible, not to find a universal formula for it, but the formula which expresses most adequately this or that special manifestation of it, is the aim of the true student of aesthetics.
    Walter Pater (1839–1894)

    ... if, as women, we accept a philosophy of history that asserts that women are by definition assimilated into the male universal, that we can understand our past through a male lens—if we are unaware that women even have a history—we live our lives similarly unanchored, drifting in response to a veering wind of myth and bias.
    Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)

    The man who knows governments most completely is he who troubles himself least about a definition which shall give their essence. Enjoying an intimate acquaintance with all their particularities in turn, he would naturally regard an abstract conception in which these were unified as a thing more misleading than enlightening.
    William James (1842–1910)