pF

PF is an acronym used in a variety of contexts. Its meaning depends on the field, and several usages are widely encountered in engineering, economics, biology, computer science, and linguistics.

Power factor (PF) is the ratio of real power to apparent power in an electrical system, indicating how efficiently electrical energy is being converted into useful work. Values range from 0 to 1, with 1 representing an ideal, fully efficient system. Low PF causes higher current for a given load and can lead to additional loss, overheating, and utility penalties. Power-factor correction devices such as capacitors or synchronous condensers are used to improve PF.

Provident Fund (PF) refers to a government-managed retirement savings scheme in several countries, funded by employee and employer contributions. The specifics vary by country, but PF programs typically provide retirement benefits, and may also cover pensions, healthcare, and withdrawal rules.

Pfam protein families (PF) are identifiers used in bioinformatics to classify protein domains. Each PF-number (for example PF00069) denotes a conserved protein family within the Pfam database, facilitating the study of protein structure and evolution.

Page fault (PF) is a memory-management event in which a program accesses data not currently loaded in physical memory. The operating system handles the fault by loading the required page from disk into RAM, possibly causing latency.

Phonological form (PF) is a term in linguistics used to refer to the surface, spoken form of a sentence or expression, as distinct from its underlying syntactic structure and its semantic interpretation.