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1   /*
2    * Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one or more
3    * contributor license agreements.  See the NOTICE file distributed with
4    * this work for additional information regarding copyright ownership.
5    * The ASF licenses this file to You under the Apache License, Version 2.0
6    * (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with
7    * the License.  You may obtain a copy of the License at
8    *
9    *      https://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
10   *
11   * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
12   * distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
13   * WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
14   * See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
15   * limitations under the License.
16   */
17  
18  /*
19   * This is not the original file distributed by the Apache Software Foundation
20   * It has been modified by the Hipparchus project
21   */
22  package org.hipparchus;
23  
24  /**
25   * Interface representing a <a href="http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Field.html">field</a>.
26   * <p>
27   * Classes implementing this interface will often be singletons.
28   * </p>
29   * @param <T> the type of the field elements
30   * @see FieldElement
31   */
32  public interface Field<T extends FieldElement<T>> {
33  
34      /** Get the additive identity of the field.
35       * <p>
36       * The additive identity is the element e<sub>0</sub> of the field such that
37       * for all elements a of the field, the equalities a + e<sub>0</sub> =
38       * e<sub>0</sub> + a = a hold.
39       * </p>
40       * @return additive identity of the field
41       */
42      T getZero();
43  
44      /** Get the multiplicative identity of the field.
45       * <p>
46       * The multiplicative identity is the element e<sub>1</sub> of the field such that
47       * for all elements a of the field, the equalities a &times; e<sub>1</sub> =
48       * e<sub>1</sub> &times; a = a hold.
49       * </p>
50       * @return multiplicative identity of the field
51       */
52      T getOne();
53  
54      /**
55       * Returns the runtime class of the FieldElement.
56       *
57       * @return The {@code Class} object that represents the runtime
58       *         class of this object.
59       */
60      Class<T> getRuntimeClass();
61  
62  }