# Laplacian to another order?

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I know of several uses for the Laplacian operator Del^2 in physics and the like.

Is there a mathematical/physical meaning of Del^3. What would be this operators name?

Does this hold for Del^n. Would this have applications in hyperdimmensional geometry?

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It's an operator so you've gotta be very careful about what the index actually means.

There is such a thing as Del^4 which is called the bilapacian operator:

http://icl.pku.edu.cn/yujs/MathWorld/math/b/b194.htm

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The first question you should be asking yourself is: How do I contruct $\textdisplay \nabla ^3$?

The biharmonic operator provided in the link by Aeschylus should be written as $\textdisplay \nabla ^2 \nabla ^2$, not as $\textdisplay \nabla ^4$ (since that doesn't make any sense, but it apparently is defined that way to shorten the notation). Just remember that these operators are short-hand for large expressions which mathematicians are too lazy to write.

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