It is commonly known that waves can be express in terms of sine or cosine function.
But when I study further, I seen that for analyising the waves, it is common to use complex functions in the form
$$y=y_{_0}e^{i(kx-\omega{t})}$$
where $y_{_0}$ is the amplitude, $k$ is the wave number, $\omega$ is the angular velocity and $x$ & $t$ are position an time respectively. Ofcourse, I know that the function $e^{ix}$ can be written in the form $\cos{x}+i\sin{x}$ and so it is a periodic function with period $2\pi$ but my question is for what purpose we define it in terms of complex numbers? It seem to be more convenient to use real functions for real variables such as amplitude, electric and magnetic field of an electro magnetic wave, and also in quantum mechanics. What actually this interpretation means or what is the advantage of such functions?
Saturday, 27 December 2014
What is the need of complex functions in wave analysis?
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