3.
Conjugate and Modulus
In the previous section we looked at algebraic operations on complex [Link] are a couple of
other operations that we should take a look at since they tend to show up on [Link]’ll also take a
look at quite a few nice facts about these operations.
Complex Conjugate
The first one we’ll look at is the complex conjugate, (or just the conjugate).Given the complex number
the complex conjugate is denoted by
¯¯¯
and is defined to be,
¯¯¯
(1)
In other words, we just switch the sign on the imaginary part of the number.
Here are some basic facts about conjugates.
¯¯¯
¯¯¯
¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯
¯¯¯
¯¯¯
¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯
=
¯¯¯
¯¯¯
¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯
¯¯¯
¯¯¯
(2)
(3)
(4)
(5)
The first one just says that if we conjugate twice we get back to what we started with originally and
hopefully this makes some [Link] remaining three just say we can break up sum, differences,
products and quotients into the individual pieces and then conjugate.
So, just so we can say that we worked a number example or two let’s do a couple of examples
illustrating the above facts.
Example 1 Compute each of the following.
¯¯¯
¯¯¯
for
15
¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯
for
and
z
¯¯¯¯¯
¯¯¯¯¯
for
and
+
3
Show Solution
There is another nice fact that uses conjugates that we should probably take a look [Link], instead
of just giving the fact away let’s derive [Link]’ll start with a complex number
and then perform each of the following operations.
¯¯¯
)
z
¯¯¯
Now, recalling that
Re
and
Im
we see that we have,
Re
¯¯¯
Im
¯¯¯
(6)
Modulus
The other operation we want to take a look at in this section is the modulus of a complex [Link]
a complex number
z
the modulus is denoted by
and is defined by
(7)
Notice that the modulus of a complex number is always a real number and in fact it will never be
negative since square roots always return a positive number or zero depending on what is under the
radical.
Notice that if
is a real number (i.e.
) then,
where the
on the
is the modulus of the complex number and the
|
on the
is the absolute value of a real number (recall that in general for any real number
we have
).So, from this we can see that for real numbers the modulus and absolute value are essentially the
same thing.
We can get a nice fact about the relationship between the modulus of a complex number and its real
and imaginary [Link] see this let’s square both sides of
(7)
and use the fact that
Re
and
Im
z
=
.Doing this we arrive at
Re
Im
Since all three of these terms are positive we can drop the
Im
z
part on the left which gives the following inequality,
Re
Im
Re
If we then square root both sides of this we get,
|
≥
Re
where the
on the
is the modulus of the complex number and the
on the
Re
are absolute value bars. Finally, for any real number
we also know that
(absolute value…) and so we get,
|
z
Re
Re
(8)
We can use a similar argument to arrive at,
Im
Im
(9)
There is a very nice relationship between the modulus of a complex number and its [Link]’s start
with a complex number
and take a look at the following product.
¯¯¯
2
+
From this product we can see that
¯¯¯
(10)
This is a nice and convenient fact on occasion.
Notice as well that in computing the modulus the sign on the real and imaginary part of the complex
number won’t affect the value of the modulus and so we can also see that,
¯¯¯
z
∣
(11)
and
(12)
We can also now formalize the process for division from the previous section now that we have the
modulus and conjugate [Link] order to get the
out of the denominator of the quotient we really multiplied the numerator and denominator by the
conjugate of the [Link] using
(10)
we can simplify the notation a [Link] all this gives the following formula for division,
z
2
¯¯¯
¯¯¯
¯¯¯
Here’s a quick example illustrating this,
Example 2 Evaluate
3
i
10
Show Solution
Here are some more nice facts about the modulus of a complex number.
|
=
|
(13)
(14)
(15)
Property
(13)
should make some sense to [Link] the modulus is zero then
, but the only way this can be zero is if both
and
are zero.
To verify
(14)
consider the following,
2
|
¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯
using property
(10)
¯¯¯
1
¯¯¯
using property
(4)
¯¯¯
¯¯¯
rearranging terms
2
using property
(10)
again (twice)
So, from this we can see that
Finally, recall that we know that the modulus is always positive so take the square root of both sides to
arrive at
1
z
Property
(15)
can be verified using a similar argument.
Triangle Inequality and Variants
Properties
(14)
and
(15)
relate the modulus of a product/quotient of two complex numbers to the product/quotient of the
modulus of the individual [Link] now need to take a look at a similar relationship for sums of
complex [Link] relationship is called the triangle inequality and is,
1
+
(16)
We’ll also be able to use this to get a relationship for the difference of complex numbers.
The triangle inequality is actually fairly simple to prove so let’s do that. We'll start with the left side
squared and use
(10)
and
(3)
to rewrite it a little.
1
+
¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯
)
(
¯¯¯¯¯
¯¯¯¯¯
Now multiply out the right side to get,
¯¯¯
¯¯¯
z
¯¯¯
¯¯¯
(17)
Next notice that,
¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯
¯¯¯
¯¯¯
2
¯¯¯¯¯
¯¯¯¯¯
¯¯¯
and so using
(6)
(8)
and
(11)
we can write middle two terms of the right side of
(17)
as
¯¯¯
¯¯¯
z
¯¯¯
¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯
¯¯¯
Re
¯¯¯
∣
z
¯¯¯
¯¯¯
2
|
Also use
(10)
on the first and fourth term in
(17)
to write them as,
¯¯¯
¯¯¯
2
With the rewrite on the middle two terms we can now write
(17)
as
¯¯¯
¯¯¯
¯¯¯
z
1
¯¯¯
¯¯¯
¯¯¯
2
|
1
|
So, putting all this together gives,
|
)
Now, recalling that the modulus is always positive we can square root both sides and we’ll arrive at the
triangle inequality.
There are several variations of the triangle inequality that can all be easily derived.
Let’s first start by assuming that
|
≥
.This is not required for the derivation, but will help to get a more general version of what we’re going to
derive [Link], let’s start with
and do some work on it.
≤
|
Using triangle inequality
Now, rewrite things a little and we get,
|
(18)
If we now assume that
|
z
we can go through a similar process as above except this time switch
and
and we get,
=
−
(19)
Now, recalling the definition of absolute value we can combine
(18)
and
(19)
into the following variation of the triangle inequality.
2
|
(20)
Also, if we replace
with
in
(16)
and
(20)
we arrive at two more variations of the triangle inequality.
|
(21)
|
|
(22)
