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Complex Numbers (Loci) Summary

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49 views2 pages

Complex Numbers (Loci) Summary

Uploaded by

lbwnb.68868
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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National Junior College Mathematics Department 2016

Complex Numbers (Loci) Summary

§1 The Principle of “z – a”

Let A and Z be the points representing a fixed complex number a and a variable complex
number z respectively. Then

The directed line segment AZ represents the difference between the two complex numbers,
z – a.

Diagrammatically, we have the following.

Hence,
 z - a is the distance between the points representing z and a.
 arg( z - a ) is the angle between the directed line segment AZ and the positive real axis.

Consequently this translates to loci in the Argand diagram for the possible points
representing z. For example,
 z - a = r means the points representing z and a are of a fixed distance r apart.
 z - a £ z - b means that the points representing z is closer to the point representing
a than the point representing b.

§2 The Three Standard Loci

For this section, we will take the upper case notation to mean the point representing the
complex number with the lower case notation in the Argand diagram e.g. A represents the
complex number a.

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National Junior College Mathematics Department 2016

z -a = r z -a = z -b arg( z - a ) = q
The distance between A and
Z is equidistant between A The angle between AZ and
Z is equals to the fixed
and B. the real axis is θ.
constant r.

z -a £ r z -a £ z -b arg( z - a ) £ q *
The distance between A and Z is not as close to B as it is The angle between AZ and
Z is at most the value of r. to A. the real axis is at most θ.

z -a < r z -a < z -b arg( z - a ) < q *


The distance between A and The angle between AZ and
Z is closer to A than to B.
Z is less than r. the real axis is less than θ.

*For loci involving arguments, we will assume that the angle must lie in the principal
argument range -p < q £ p.

You should be able to follow the same principle to sketch the loci for each of the above
inequalities if the inequality sign is reversed. (The region would then be the complements
of what areshown above.)
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