User:Aleksander Stos/ComplexNumberAdvanced

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This is an experimental draft. For a brief description of the project and motivations click here.

Complex numbers are defined as ordered pairs of reals:

Such pairs can be added and multiplied as follows

  • addition:
  • multiplication:

with the addition and the multiplication is the field of complex numbers.

To perform basic computations it is convenient to introduce the imaginary unit, i=(0,1).[1] It has the property Any complex number can be written as (this is often called the algebraic form) and vice-versa. The numbers a and b are called the real part and the imaginary part of z, respectively. We denote and Notice that i makes the multiplication quite natural:

The square root of number in the denominator in the above formula is called the modulus of z and denoted by ,

We have for any two complex numbers and

  • provided

For we define also , the conjugate, by Then we have

  • provided

Complex numbers may be naturally represented on the complex plane, i.e. corresponds to the point (x,y), see the fig. 1.

Fig. 1. Graphical representation of a complex number and its conjugate
  1. in some applications it is denoted by j as well.