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"Flirting With Catastrophe, " by Robert H. Leary. Science, 14 September 2001, page 2013.
This short article describes the application of catastrophe theory to the study of potential energy surfaces (PES's). PES's govern the behavior of atomic and molecular assemblies, and they are often conceptualized as n-dimensional landscapes determined by some number of parameters. When one of these parameters is perturbed, critical points in the landscapes---basins, peaks, and passes---may suddenly appear or disappear. These "catastrophes" can be analyzed mathematically, and their possible behaviors can be classified as long as the number of parameters does not exceed 5.
--- Rafe Jones
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