Canonical form

Generally, in mathematics, a canonical form (often called normal form) of an object is a standard presentation.

Canonical form can also mean a differential form that is defined in a natural (canonical) way; see below.

Definition
Suppose we have some set S of objects, with an equivalence relation. A canonical form is given by designating some objects of S to be "in canonical form", such that every object under consideration is equivalent to exactly one object in canonical form. In other words, the canonical forms in S represent the equivalence classes, once and only once. A canonical form provides a classification theorem, and is more data, in that it not only classifies every class, but gives a distinguished (canonical) representative.

In practical terms, one wants to be able to recognise the canonical forms. There is also a practical, algorithmic question to consider: how to pass from a given s in S to its canonical form s*? Canonical forms are generally used to make operating with equivalence classes more effective. For example in modular arithmetic, the canonical form for a residue class is usually taken as the least non-negative integer in it. Operations on classes are carried out by combining these representatives and then reducing the result to its least non-negative residue.

The uniqueness requirement is sometimes relaxed, allowing the forms to be unique up to some finer equivalence relation, like allowing reordering of terms (if there is no natural ordering on terms).

A canonical form may simply be a convention, or a deep theorem.

For example, polynomials are conventionally written with the terms in descending powers: it is more usual to write x² + x + 30 than x + 30 + x², although the two forms define the same polynomial. By contrast, the existence of Jordan canonical form for a matrix is a deep theorem.

Examples
Note: in this section, "up to" some equivalence relation E means that the canonical form is not unique in general, but that if one object has two different canonical forms, they are E-equivalent.

Classical logic

 * Negation normal form
 * Conjunctive normal form
 * Disjunctive normal form
 * Algebraic normal form
 * Canonical form (Boolean algebra)
 * Prenex normal form

Game theory

 * Normal form game

Proof theory

 * Normal form (natural deduction)

Lambda calculus

 * Beta normal form if no beta reduction is possible

Dynamical systems

 * Normal form of a bifurcation

Differential forms
Canonical differential forms include the canonical one-form and canonical symplectic form, important in the study of Hamiltonian mechanics and symplectic manifolds.

Kanonický tvar