Supercritical Explained

Supercritical may refer to:

Physics and technology

Condensed matter physics

• Critical temperature, T_C, a temperature above which distinct liquid and gas phases do not exist for a given material
  • Supercritical drying, a process used to remove liquid in a precisely controlled way, similar to freeze drying
  • Supercritical fluid, a substance at a temperature and pressure above its thermodynamic critical point:
    • Supercritical carbon dioxide:
      • Supercritical fluid chromatography, a form of liquid chromatography using supercritical carbon dioxide as the mobile phase
    • Supercritical water:
      • Supercritical steam generator, a steam generator operating above the critical point of water, hence having no water–steam separation
      • Supercritical water oxidation or SCWO, a process that occurs in water at temperatures and pressures above a mixture's thermodynamic critical point
      • Supercritical water reactor (SCWR), a Generation IV nuclear reactor concept that uses supercritical water as the working fluid

Flows

• Supercritical flow, where flow velocity is larger than wave velocity
  • Supercritical airfoil, an airfoil designed to delay the onset of wave drag in the transonic speed regime

Nuclear physics

• Supercritical mass, an amount of fissile material that will undergo a sustained nuclear chain reaction at an increasing rate

Mathematics

• Hopf bifurcation, in mathematics, a local bifurcation; when the first Lyapunov coefficient is negative, the bifurcation is called supercritical
• Pitchfork bifurcation, in mathematics, similar to Hopf bifurcation

Other uses

• Super Critical, an album by British pop/rock group The Ting Tings