There has long been a mystery when calculating how an incoming light wave scatters off an object and becomes a modified, ...

Unlike the more familiar real numbers—positive and negative integers, fractions, square roots, cube roots and even numbers such as pi—complex numbers have an imaginary component.

Imaginary numbers aren’t imaginary. Magnitudes of complex numbers in polar forms can be treated like a resistance. Phase angle is the time delay between the voltage and the current waveform.

When you add imaginary numbers and real numbers, the two form complex numbers, which enable physicists to write out quantum equations in simple terms.

Sometimes, so-called complex numbers, with both real and imaginary parts, such as 2 + 3 i, have streamlined calculations, but in apparently optional ways.

Real and imaginary: The time-dependent Schrödinger equation formulated using complex numbers. (Courtesy: iStock/piranka) Complex numbers are essential to achieve the most accurate quantum-mechanical ...

DURHAM, N.C. – Computer engineers at Duke University have demonstrated that using complex numbers—numbers with both real and imaginary components—can play an integral part in securing ...

A complex number has two parts: a real part and an imaginary part. I’ve often thought that a lot of books and classes just kind of gloss over what this really means.

Quantum theory’s prominent use of complex numbers — sums of imaginary and real numbers — was disconcerting to its founders, including physicist Erwin Schrödinger.

Mathematicians once turned up their noses at imaginary numbers. But complex analysis actually simplifies math and physics.