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As a complex number, i can be represented in rectangular form as 0 + 1i, with a zero real component and a unit imaginary component. In polar form , i can be represented as 1 × e πi /2 (or just e πi /2 ), with an absolute value (or magnitude) of 1 and an argument (or angle) of π 2 {\displaystyle {\tfrac {\pi }{2}}} radians .
As φ has a range of 360° the same considerations as in polar (2 dimensional) coordinates apply whenever an arctangent of it is taken. θ has a range of 180°, running from 0° to 180°, and does not pose any problem when calculated from an arccosine, but beware for an arctangent.
the point's direction from the pole relative to the direction of the polar axis, a ray drawn from the pole. The distance from the pole is called the radial coordinate, radial distance or simply radius, and the angle is called the angular coordinate, polar angle, or azimuth. [1] The pole is analogous to the origin in a Cartesian coordinate system.
A complex number can also be defined by its geometric polar coordinates: the radius is called the absolute value of the complex number, while the angle from the positive real axis is called the argument of the complex number. The complex numbers of absolute value one form the unit circle.
In polar form, if and are real numbers then the conjugate of is . This can be shown using Euler's formula . The product of a complex number and its conjugate is a real number: a 2 + b 2 {\displaystyle a^{2}+b^{2}} (or r 2 {\displaystyle r^{2}} in polar coordinates ).
This means that in polar coordinates, we are taking the cube root of the radius and dividing the polar angle by three in order to define a cube root. With this definition, the principal cube root of a negative number is a complex number, and for instance − 8 3 {\displaystyle {\sqrt[{3}]{-8}}} will not be −2, but rather 1 + i 3 ...
x is the argument of the complex number (angle between line to point and x-axis in polar form). The notation is less commonly used in mathematics than Euler's formula, e ix, which offers an even shorter notation for cos x + i sin x, but cis(x) is widely used as a name for this function in software libraries.
Once the radius is fixed, the three coordinates (r, θ, φ), known as a 3-tuple, provide a coordinate system on a sphere, typically called the spherical polar coordinates. The plane passing through the origin and perpendicular to the polar axis (where the polar angle is a right angle) is called the reference plane (sometimes fundamental plane).