< User:Aleksander StosRevision as of 08:06, 13 August 2007 by imported>Aleksander Stos
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
- ↑ in some applications it is denoted by j as well.