Wick Rotation

High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! In physics, Wick rotation, named after Gian-Carlo Wick, is a method of finding a solution to a problem in Minkowski space from a solution to a related problem in Euclidean space, by analytic continuation.Wick rotation relates statics problems in n dimensions to dynamics problems in n 1 dimensions, trading one dimension of space for one dimension of time. A simple example where n = 2 is a hanging spring with fixed endpoints in a gravitational field. The shape of the spring is a curve y(x). The spring is in equilibrium when the energy associated with this curve is at a critical point; this critical point is typically a minimum, so this idea is usually called "the principle of least energy".