Class notes

4. Polar & Exponential Form

Most people are familiar with complex numbers in the form

, however there are some alternate forms that are useful at times. In this section we’ll look at both of
those as well as a couple of nice facts that arise from them.

Geometric Interpretation

Before we get into the alternate forms we should first take a very brief look at a natural geometric
interpretation of complex numbers since this will lead us into our first alternate form.

Consider the complex number

. We can think of this complex number as either the point

b
)

in the standard Cartesian coordinate system or as the vector that starts at the origin and ends at the
point

. An example of this is shown in the figure below.

In this interpretation we call the

-axis the real axis and the

-axis the imaginary axis. We often call the

-plane in this interpretation the complex plane.

Note as well that we can now get a geometric interpretation of the modulus. From the image above, we
can see that

2
+

is nothing more than the length of the vector that we’re using to represent the complex number

. This interpretation also tells us that the inequality

<

means that

is closer to the origin (in the complex plane) than

is.

Polar Form
Let’s now take a look at the first alternate form for a complex number. If we think of the non-zero
complex number

as the point

in the

-plane we also know that we can represent this point by the polar coordinates

, where

is the distance of the point from the origin and

is the angle, in radians, from the positive

x
-axis to the ray connecting the origin to the point.

When working with complex numbers we assume that

is positive and that

can be any of the possible (both positive and negative) angles that end at the ray. Note that this means
that there are literally an infinite number of choices for

We excluded

since

is not defined for the point (0,0). We will therefore only consider the polar form of non-zero complex
numbers.

We have the following conversion formulas for converting the polar coordinates

into the corresponding Cartesian coordinates of the point,

(
a

cos

sin

If we substitute these into

and factor an

out we arrive at the polar form of the complex number,

=
r

cos

sin

(1)

Note as well that we also have the following formula from polar coordinates relating

to

and

but, the right side is nothing more than the definition of the modulus and we see that,
r

(2)

So, sometimes the polar form will be written as,

cos

sin

(3)

The angle

θ
is called the argument of

and is denoted by,

arg

The argument of

can be any of the infinite possible values of

each of which can be found by solving

tan

(4)

and making sure that

is in the correct quadrant.

Note as well that any two values of the argument will differ from each other by an integer multiple of

π
. This makes sense when you consider the following.

For a given complex number

pick any of the possible values of the argument, say

. If you now increase the value of

, which is really just increasing the angle that the point makes with the positive

-axis, you are rotating the point about the origin in a counter-clockwise manner. Since it takes

radians to make one complete revolution you will be back at your initial starting point when you reach

and so have a new value of the argument. See the figure below.

If you keep increasing the angle you will again be back at the starting point when you reach

, which is again a new value of the argument. Continuing in this fashion we can see that every time we
reach a new value of the argument we will simply be adding multiples of

2
π

onto the original value of the argument.

Likewise, if you start at

and decrease the angle you will be rotating the point about the origin in a clockwise manner and will
return to your original starting point when you reach

. Continuing in this fashion and we can again see that each new value of the argument will be found by
subtracting a multiple of

from the original value of the argument.

So, we can see that if

and

are two values of

arg

then for some integer

we will have,
θ

(5)

Note that we’ve also shown here that

cos

sin

is a parametric representation for a circle of radius

centered at the origin and that it will trace out a complete circle in a counter-clockwise direction as the
angle increases from
θ

to

The principal value of the argument (sometimes called the principal argument) is the unique value of the
argument that is in the range

<

arg

and is denoted by

Arg

. Note that the inequalities at either end of the range tells that a negative real number will have a
principal value of the argument of

Arg

Recalling that we noted above that any two values of the argument will differ from each other by a
multiple of
2

leads us to the following fact.

arg

Arg

(6)

We should probably do a couple of quick numerical examples at this point before we move on to look
the second alternate form of a complex number.
Example 1 Write down the polar form of each of the following complex numbers.

12

Show All Solutions Hide All Solutions

Show Solution
b

Show Solution

12

Show Solution

Exponential Form

Now that we’ve discussed the polar form of a complex number we can introduce the second alternate
form of a complex number. First, we’ll need Euler’s formula,

cos

sin

(7)
With Euler’s formula we can rewrite the polar form of a complex number into its exponential form as
follows.

where

arg

and so we can see that, much like the polar form, there are an infinite number of possible exponential
forms for a given complex number. Also, because any two arguments for a give complex number differ
by an integer multiple of

we will sometimes write the exponential form as,

2
π

where

is any value of the argument although it is more often than not the principal value of the argument.

To get the value of

we can either use

(3)

to write the exponential form or we can take a more direct approach. Let’s take the direct approach.
Take the modulus of both sides and then do a little simplification as follows,

=
∣

cos

sin
θ

cos

sin

and we see that

Note as well that because we can consider

=
r

cos

sin

as a parametric representation of a circle of radius

and the exponential form of a complex number is really another way of writing the polar form we can
also consider

a parametric representation of a circle of radius

Now that we’ve got the exponential form of a complex number out of the way we can use this along
with basic exponent properties to derive some nice facts about complex numbers and their arguments.

First, let’s start with the non-zero complex number

=
r

. In the arithmetic section we gave a fairly complex formula for the multiplicative inverse, however, with
the exponential form of the complex number we can get a much nicer formula for the multiplicative
inverse.

)
−

Note that since

is a non-zero real number we know that

. So, putting this together the exponential form of the multiplicative inverse is,
z

(8)

and the polar form of the multiplicative inverse is,

cos

θ
)

sin

(9)

We can also get some nice formulas for the product or quotient of complex numbers. Given two
complex numbers

and

2
e

, where

is any value of

arg

and

is any value of

arg

, we have

e
i

z
2

)
(10)

(11)

The polar forms for both of these are,

cos

sin

1
+

cos

sin

1
−

(12)

(13)

We can also use

(10)

and

(11)

to get some nice facts about the arguments of a product and a quotient of complex numbers. Since

is any value of

arg

and

is any value of

arg

we can see that,

arg

arg

arg

arg

arg

z
2

(14)

(15)

Note that

(14)

and

(15)

may or may not work if you use the principal value of the argument,

. For example, consider

and

. In this case we have

z
2

and the principal value of the argument for each is,

Arg

Arg

Arg

2
However,

Arg

Arg

and so

(14)

doesn’t hold if we use the principal value of the argument. Note however, if we use,

arg

=
π

arg

then,

arg

arg

is valid since

2
is a possible argument for –

, it just isn’t the principal value of the argument.

As an interesting side note,

(15)

actually does work for this example if we use the principal arguments. That won’t always happen, but it
does in this case so be careful!

We will close this section with a nice fact about the equality of two complex numbers that we will make
heavy use of in the next section. Suppose that we have two complex numbers given by their exponential
forms,

and

θ
2

. Also suppose that we know that

. In this case we have,

Then we will have

if and only if,

for some integer

,
±

(16)

Note that the phrase “if and only if” is a fancy mathematical phrase that means that if

is true then so is

(16)

and likewise, if

(16)

is true then we’ll have

.
This may seem like a silly fact, but we are going to use this in the next section to help us find the powers
and roots of complex numbers.