I've been studying Calculus of Variations and I came a cross with the term "perturb" in my study material, but the term was not defined. The sentence where I read it from was:
"Rigid extremals are extremals that cannot be perturbed, and still satisfy the constraint."
The material also uses the sentence:
"Perturbing around a curve"...?
What does this mean? Thank you.
P.S. Could you please post your answer as an answer and not as comment so that I can accept it ;)
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$\begingroup$According to my dictionary
Peturb
To disturb greatly in mind; disquiet
To throw in confusion; disorder
To cause (a moving body, celestial object, etc.) to deviate from a theoretically (orbital) motion.
I think we can ignore the first definition here but the other two are relevant . If you were to nudge a system slightly you are perturbing it and we may want to consider more stable if a small perturbation dies down and returns to a steady state quickly than a system which takes a long time to recover or one which never recovers.
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