- #1
11thHeaven
- 48
- 0
Hi all, I'd just like to clear up something that's often confused me.
In classes (particularly classical waves/QM) we've often seen the lecturer switch from describing a wave as (most commonly) [tex]Acos(kx-{\omega}t)[/tex] to [tex]e^{i(kx-{\omega}t)}[/tex]
but doesn't the exponential representation include an imaginary sine term as well? Shouldn't this given wave be represented as ( [tex]Re [e^{i(kx-{\omega}t)}][/tex])?
If this is the case, is it just a convention that the "Re" is dropped?
Thanks.
In classes (particularly classical waves/QM) we've often seen the lecturer switch from describing a wave as (most commonly) [tex]Acos(kx-{\omega}t)[/tex] to [tex]e^{i(kx-{\omega}t)}[/tex]
but doesn't the exponential representation include an imaginary sine term as well? Shouldn't this given wave be represented as ( [tex]Re [e^{i(kx-{\omega}t)}][/tex])?
If this is the case, is it just a convention that the "Re" is dropped?
Thanks.