INDIAN INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY BOMBAY MA 205 - Complex Analysis (Autumn 2008

Lecture 1: 24th July 2008

Basic Properties of Complex Numbers

1 Prerequisites 1.1 Real Numbers: I The law of commutativity: a + b = b + a; ab = ba, for all a, b R. II The law of associativity: (a + b) + c = a + (b + c); (ab)c = a(bc), for all a, b, c R. III The law of distributivity: (a + b)c = ac + bc, for all a, b, c R. IV The law of identity: a + 0 = a; a1 = a, for all a R. V The law of additive inverse: Given any a R, there exists a unique x R such that a + x = 0. VI The law of multiplicative inverse: Given a R, a = 0, there exists a unique x R such that ax = 1. Furthermore, there is a total ordering < on R, compatible with the above arithmetic operations, which makes R into an ordered eld. Recall that < is a total ordering means that: VII given any two real numbers a, b, either a = b or a < b or b < a. The ordering < is compatible with the arithmetic operations means the following: VIII a < b = a + c < b + c and ad < bd for all a, b, c R and d > 0.

Algebra of Complex Numbers

We dene the algebra of complex numbers C to be the set of formal symbols x+y, x, y R together with the addition and multiplication dened as follows: (x1 + y1 ) + (x2 + y2 ) = (x1 + x2 ) + (y1 + y2 ); (x1 + y1 )(x2 + y2 ) = (x1 x2 y1 y2 ) + (x1 y2 + y1 x2 ). 2 + 1 = 0; i.e., 2 = 1.

Observe that a complex number is well-determined by the two real numbers, x, y viz., z := x + y. These are respectively called the real part and imaginary part of z. We write:

z = x; z = y. 1

(1)

If (z) = 0, we say z is (purely) imaginary and similarly if (z) = 0, then we say z is real. The only complex number which is both real and purely imaginary is 0. Observe that, according to our denition, every real number is also a complex number. equating the real and the imaginary parts of the two sides of an equation is indeed a part of the denition of complex numbers and will play a very important role. Remark 1 You may have heard of Cardano1 in connection with his solution of cubic equations. Perhaps, he is the rst to introduce the complex numbers around 1545, even without realizing it, in solving the following problem: Divide 10 into two parts so that the product of these two parts is equal to 40. As a warming-up exercise, show that this problem has no solution in reals. Cardano strongly believed in this. Instead of taking it as a nal answer, Cardano, with great reluctance perhaps, created the complex numbers and then rejected the whole idea terming it as ctitious. His grip over them seems to have been quite shaky, chiey because he was not psychologically ready to have a number system in which two numbers cannot be compared. This was the case with many of his contemporaries and several illustrious predecessors such as Euler, who tried in vain to put an order on complex numbers. Let us see why Euler was bound to fail in his attempt. Theorem 1 There is no total ordering < on C such that a < b = a + c < b + c, a, b, c C and a < b, 0 < c = ac < bc, a, b, c C. If so, either 0 < or < 0 Consider the rst case. By multiplying both sides by , we get 0 < 1. Therefore, upon multiplying both sides of this inequality by 1, we get 0 < 1. Now adding the two inequalities we we get 0 < 0, which is absurd. Similarly, you can verify that the assumption < 0 would lead to a contradiction. Five years later, Bombelli2 introduced the complex numbers more systematically in his famous book Algebra, which he wrote shortly after Cardanos Ars Magna. Nevertheless, certain mysticism surrounded the complex numbers until the time of Hamilton3 , whose work not only demystied the complex numbers but eventually liberated algebra from arithmetic.
Girolamo Cardano(1501-1576) was a Milanise doctor and a professor of mathematics, known for his scandals, his book Ars Magna. He lectured and wrote on mathematics, medicine, astronomy, astrology, alchemy and physics. 2 Raael Bombelli was a Bolognese Engineer (1526-1572). 3 William Rowan Hamilton, an Irish Mathematician (1805-1865)
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 Remark 2 There are many symbols, in the literature, for 1. The most popular symbol is i, which was used by Euler4 , for the rst time in 1777. Later Gauss5 used it systematically. Nevertheless, it took a lot more time to become commonly accepted. In electrodynamics, the symbol i is used to denote the strength of the current. That is the reason why the electrical engineers cooked up a dierent symbol viz. j for 1. However, in aerospace engineering, j stands for log(1) and hence they started using another symbol (the dotless i) which was earlier introduced by Dickson6 . This last symbol has been now adopted by Donald Knuth in Tex and we too have adopted it. Strictly speaking, we should read this symbol iota. Since this would divert too much from the established practice, we read it as eye to rhyme with bye or my. Remark 3 If you wonder why multiplication of complex numbers is dened in rather a complicated way, you may read about it say from my book, An introduction to Complex Analyis, published by MacMillan India.

Conjugation and Absolute Value

Denition 1 Following common practice, for z = x + y we denote by z = x y and call it the (complex) conjugate of z. and call it the conjugate of z.

(z) =

z+z ; 2

(z) =

zz . 2

(2)

z1 + z2 = z1 + z2 ,

z1 z2 = z1 z2 ,

z = z.

(3)

Denition 2 Given z C, z = a + b, we dene its absolute value (length ) |z| to be the non-negative square root of a2 + b2 , i.e., |z| :=
4

(a2 + b2 ).

Leonhard Euler(1707-1783) was a Swiss mathematician, the most productive amongst all the eighteenth century mathematicians. His major contributions are in mechanics, trigonometry, geometry, dierential calculus and number theory. His collected works contains 886 books and papers. 5 Carl Friederick Gauss (1777-1855) was a German, the rst modern mathematician. He has been described as the Prince of Mathematics. He worked in a variety of elds both in mathematics and physics. If you have doubts about the originator of some classical result, attribute it to Gauss and there is a good chance that you may be correct. 6 Leonard E. Dickson, a U. S. mathematician, known for his work on the theory of nite groups.

Remark 4 |z|2 = zz. Therefore z C, |z| = 0 z = 0. Also, for z = 0,

z 1 = z|z|2 . Basic Identities and Inequalities (B1) |z| = |z|. (B2) |z1 z2 | = |z1 ||z2 |. (B3) |(z)| |z| ( resp. |(z)| |z|); equality holds i (z) = 0 (resp. (z) = 0). (B4) Cosine Rule: |z1 + z2 |2 = |z1 |2 + |z2 |2 + 2(z1 z2 ). (B5) Parallelogram Law : |z1 + z2 |2 + |z1 z2 |2 = 2(|z1 |2 + |z2 |2 ). (B6) Triangle inequality : |z1 + z2 | |z1 | + |z2 | and equality holds i one of the zj is a non-negative multiple of the other. (B7) Cauchys7 Inequality :
n 2

zj wj
j=1

n j=1

|zj |2

j=1

|wj |2 .

Polar form:

r(cos , sin ) E() 0 r

Fig. 1
Augustin Louis Cauchy (1789-1857) was a French mathematician, an engineer by training. He did pioneering work in analysis and the theory of permutation groups, innite series, dierential equations, determinants, probability and mathematical physics.
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Given (x, y) = z = 0, the angle , measured in counter-clockwise sense, made by the line segment [0, z] with the positive real axis is called the argument or amplitude of z: = arg z. x = r cos ; y = r sin (4)

Let us temporarily set-up the notation

E() := cos + sin . Then the complex number z = x + y takes the form z = r(cos + sin ) =: rE().

(5)

Observe |z| = r. Now let z1 = r1 E(1 ), z2 = r2 E(2 ). Using additive identities for sine and cosine viz.,

sin(1 + 2 ) = sin 1 cos 2 + cos 1 sin 2 , cos(1 + 2 ) = cos 1 cos 2 sin 1 sin 2 , we obtain z1 z2 = r1 r2 E(1 + 2 ).

(6)

(7)

If we further remind ourselves that the argument can take values (in radians) between 0 and 2, then the above identity tells us that arg(z1 z2 ) = arg z1 + arg z2 (mod 2) provided z1 = 0, z2 = 0. Put zj = rj E(j ) for j = 1, 2, and let be the angle between the vectors represented by these points. Then z1 z2 = r1 r2 E(1 2 ) and hence (z1 z2 ) = r1 r2 cos . Thus, cos = Now, we can rewrite the cosine rule as:
2 2 |z1 + z2 |2 = r1 + r2 + 2r1 r2 cos .

(z1 z2 ) . |z1 z2 |

(8)

(9)

Note that by putting = /2 in (9), we get Pythagoras theorem. Remark 5 Observe that given z = 0, arg z is a multi-valued function. Indeed, if is one such value then all other values are given by + 2n, where n Z. Thus to be precise, we have arg z = { + 2n : n Z} 5

This is the rst natural example of a multi-valued function. We shall come across many multi-valued functions in complex analysis, all due to this nature of arg z. However, while carrying out arithmetic operations we must select a suitable value for arg from this set. One of these values of arg z which satises < arg z is singled out and is called the principal value of arg z and is denoted by Arg z. Example 1 The three cube roots of unity are 1, cos which we can simplify as: 1 + 1, 2 2 4 4 2 + sin , cos + sin 3 3 3 3 3 1 , 2 3 .

Remark 6 deMoivres8 Law Now observe that, by putting r1 = r2 = 1 in (7) we obtain: E(1 + 2 ) = E(1 )E(2 ). Putting 1 = 2 = and applying the above result repeatedly, we obtain E(n) = E()n . This is restated in the following: deMoivres Law: cos n + sin n = (cos + sin )n . (10)

Remark 7 Roots of complex numbers: Thanks to our geometric understanding, we can now show that the equation

Xn = z

(11)

has exactly n roots in C for every non zero z C. Suppose w is a complex number that satises the equation (in place of X,) we merely write z = rE(Arg z), Then we have, sn E(nArg w) = w n = z = rE(Arg z) Therefore we must have s = n r = n |z| and arg w will contain the values Arg z 2k + , n n k = 0, 1, . . . , n 1. w = sE(Arg w).

Thus we see that (11) has n distinct solutions. One of these values viz., n |z|E( Arg z ) is n called the principal value of the nth root function and is denoted by n z.
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Abraham deMoivre(1667-1754) was a French mathematician. He also worked in Probability theory.

The parallelogram law (B5) now becomes:

The sum of the squares of the lengths of the diagonals of a parallelogram is equal to the sum of the squares of the lengths of the sides. Remark 8 Geometric Multiplication of complex numbers:

Z1 Z2

Z2 Z1 0 1
Fig. 2 In the picture above, the two triagles a similar. It tells you how to multiply two complex numbers. Similarly, to get the inverse of z2 = 0, we rst re-scale the vector OP2 to have 1 length r2 and then change its direction to have an amplitude 2 . Also, it follows that 1 the amplitude of z1 z2 is the angle that OP1 makes with OP2 . It follows that given 0 = C, the assignment z z denes a linear map 2 R R2 , which is a composite of a rotation (through an angle = Arg ) and a dilation or a scaling ( by a factor r = ||). Such linear maps R2 R2 are called similarities. For the converse part you will have to wait. Story Time This story is due to George Gamow, the well-known physicist and an ingenious story-teller. We quote from his book: ONE TWO THREE INFINITY (pp. 44-45). There was a young and adventurous man who found among his great-grand fathers papers a piece of parchment that revealed the location of a hidden treasure. The instructions read: Sail to North latitude and West longitude where thou wilt nd a deserted island. There lieth a large medow, not pent, on the north shore of the island where standeth a lonely oak and a lonely pine. There thou wilt see also an old gallows on 7

which we once were wont to hang traitors. Start thou from the gallows and walk to the oak counting thy steps. At the oak thou must turn right by a right angle and take the same number of steps. Put here a spike in the ground. Now must thou return to the gallows and walk to the pine counting thy steps. At the pine thou must turn left by a right angle and see that thou takest the same number of steps, and put another spike into the ground. Dig half-way between the spikes; the treasure is there. The story is that when the young man nally landed on the island, even though he could nd the medow and the two trees as described, the old gallows had totally disappeared! The adventurous man fell into a despair and started digging at random here and there in the vast island and nally had to return empty handed. Now, the point Gamow wants to make is that if the young man knew a bit of mathematics, particularly the use of complex numbers, he could have found the treasure. We only add that, even if the man had not despaired and just made a single attempt to guess the location of the gallows and carried out the instructions given in the parchment, he would have got the treasure as well as the great satisfaction (perhaps falsely) of guessing the position of the gallows correctly. Try to gure it out yourself before reading the solution so that you will have the satisfaction of nding the treasure. We would like to emphasis the fact that, it is not very dicult to solve this problem through elementary school geometry, either. So, you see that it is unlikely that the young man in the story did not know even that much mathematics and still could navigate to the island. Of course, if you despair, no amount of mathematics will help you! [Solution: Let us represent the map of the island by complex numbers. Of course, we are free to choose our axes and what is better than to choose the line joining the two trees as the real axis! Now, clearly, half-way between the two trees should be good choice for the origin. Then it really should not matter whether the oak or the pine is chosen as the point 1 say, the pine. Then naturally the oak will refer to 1. Let now denote the position of the gallows, which none of us know. The point is that it does not matter: carry out the rest of the instructions and you arrive at an answer independent of this unknown quantity. We feel that you should still try this problem on your own. At this stage we shall give you a hint: use the fact that multiplication by corresponds to turning a vector around a right angle in the anti-clockwise direction. Read further, only after you have tried enough. The position S1 of the rst spike is found as follows: The vector representing the distance and the direction from the gallows to the oak is 1 . Therefore, the vector representing the direction and the distance from the oak to the rst spike is got by multiplying by , viz., (1 + ). Since, this vector has to originate at the oak, we see that S1 = (1 + ) 1. Likewise, the position of the second spike is given by S2 = (1 ) + 1. The midpoint of the line segment [S1 , S2 ] is then (S1 + S2 )/2 = . And that is where the treasure is!