Supercritical
# Supercritical

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
