Degeneracy, degenerate, or degeneration may refer to:
Mathematics
- Degeneracy (mathematics), a limiting case in which a class of object changes its nature so as to belong to another, usually simpler, class
- Degeneracy (graph theory), a measure of the sparseness of a graph
- Degeneration (algebraic geometry), the act of taking a limit of a family of varieties
- Degenerate bilinear form, a bilinear form on a vector space V whose induced map from V to the dual space of V is not an isomorphism
- Degenerate distribution, the probability distribution of a random variable which only takes a single value
- Degenerate conic, a conic (a second-degree plane curve, the points of which satisfy an equation that is quadratic in one or the other or both variables) that fails to be an irreducible curve
- Degenerate dimension, a dimension key in the fact table that does not have its own dimension table, because all the interesting attributes have been placed in analytic dimensions. The term "degenerate dimension" was originated by Ralph Kimball
Quantum mechanics
- Degenerate energy levels, different arrangements of a physical system which have the same energy
- Degenerate matter, a very highly compressed phase of matter which resists further compression because of quantum mechanical effects
- Degenerate semiconductor, a semiconductor with such a high doping-level that the material starts to act more like a metal than as a semiconductor
Other uses in science and medicine