Biology and ecology

Decomposition is the process through which organic matter is broken down into simpler molecules.

Decomposition, decompose may also refer to:

Chemistry

• Chemical decomposition or analysis, in chemistry, is the fragmentation of a chemical compound into elements or smaller compounds
  • Thermal decomposition, a chemical decomposition caused by heat

Mathematics

• Doob decomposition of an integrable, discrete-time stochastic process
• Doob–Meyer decomposition of a continuous-time sub- or supermartingale
• Hahn decomposition of a measure space
• Hahn–Jordan decomposition of a signed measure
• Helmholtz decomposition, decomposition of a vector field
• Indecomposability (disambiguation)
• Indecomposable continuum
• Lebesgue's decomposition theorem, decomposition of a measure
• Lie group decomposition, used to analyse the structure of Lie groups and associated objects
• Manifold decomposition, decomposition of manifolds
  • JSJ decomposition, or toral decomposition, a decomposition of 3-manifolds
• Matrix decomposition, decomposition of matrices
• Primary decomposition, decomposition of ideals into primary ideals
• Vector decomposition, decomposition of vectors
• Permutation decomposition, decomposition of a permutation into disjoint cycles

Physics

• Spinodal decomposition, phase separation mechanism

Other uses

• Decomposition (computer science), or factoring; the process of breaking a complex problem down into easily understood and achievable parts
  • Functional decomposition, resolving a functional relationship into its constituent parts in such a way that the original function can be reconstructed from those parts
• Semantic decomposition, used in natural language processing
• Decompositions: Volume Number One, the second studio album by American screamo band Circle Takes the Square
• Zersetzung, or decomposition, a debilitative psychological warfare technique utilised by the Stasi intelligence agency in East Germany