The Laplace operator or Laplacian is a differential operator equal to or in other words, the divergence of the gradient of a function. In terms of the del operator, the Laplacian is written as Intuitively, it represents how fast the average value of changes for a growing sphere, or how the value of at a given point compares to the average of the points around it. Since the Laplacian is a scalar, it can be multiplied by vectors as well to produce the vector Laplacian, a vector triple product equal to the Laplacian of each component of the vector field.