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Imaginary time is a mathematical representation of time that appears in some approaches to special relativity and quantum mechanics. It finds uses in certain cosmological theories. Mathematically, imaginary time is real time which has undergone a Wick rotation so that its coordinates are multiplied by the imaginary unit i .
In a further development in his 1908 "Space and Time" lecture, [5] Minkowski gave an alternative formulation of this idea that used a real time coordinate instead of an imaginary one, representing the four variables (x, y, z, t) of space and time in the coordinate form in a four-dimensional real vector space. Points in this space correspond to ...
Wick rotation connects statistical mechanics to quantum mechanics by replacing inverse temperature with imaginary time, or more precisely replacing 1/k B T with it/ħ, where T is temperature, k B is the Boltzmann constant, t is time, and ħ is the reduced Planck constant. For example, consider a quantum system whose Hamiltonian H has ...
An imaginary number is the product of a real number and the imaginary unit i, [note 1] which is defined by its property i 2 = −1. [1] [2] The square of an imaginary number bi is −b 2. For example, 5i is an imaginary number, and its square is −25. The number zero is considered to be both real and imaginary. [3]
If a linear, time-invariant (LTI) system has poles that are in the right half plane, it will be unstable, all in the left half plane, it will be stable, on the imaginary axis, it will have marginal stability. If a system has zeros in the right half plane, it is a nonminimum phase system.
A spaceship departs from Earth from A to C slower than light. At B, Earth emits a tachyon, which travels faster than light but forward in time in Earth's reference frame. It reaches the spaceship at C. The spaceship then sends another tachyon back to Earth from C to D. This tachyon also travels forward in time in the spaceship's reference frame.
The line element ds 2 is complex-valued, so that the real part corresponds to mass and gravitation, while the imaginary part with charge and electromagnetism. The usual space x, y, z and time t coordinates themselves are real and spacetime is not complex, but tangent spaces are allowed to be. [6]
Imaginary may refer to: Imaginary (sociology), a concept in sociology; The Imaginary (psychoanalysis), a concept by Jacques Lacan; Imaginary number, a concept in mathematics; Imaginary time, a concept in physics; Imagination, a mental faculty; Object of the mind, an object of the imagination