1. Introduction
The operations of addition and subtraction as well as multiplication and division are each explained for elements from a well-defined number system such as that of real numbers or that of complex numbers. But is it reasonable to divide a number from one system by a number from another system? For example, what are the consequences of dividing a real number by an ordered pair of real numbers? From a scientific history perspective, answers to such and similar questions may depend on the time at which they are asked or answered.
When Euler [
7] solved the Basel problem in 1735, he calculated the value of the series
for
The great importance of his results for number theory lies in the agreement of this so-called Zeta function with Euler’s product
which extends over all prime numbers
p.
Starting with Riemann [
22], the Zeta function
for complex
z is considered, initially with a real part of
z greater than one. Thus, this function was already studied for complex arguments, even before the character of complex numbers was finally and completely explored. To substantiate this, we would like to recall that Gauss [
10], Cauchy [
3], Dedekind [
5] and Hankel [
15] had self-skeptical and critical opinions about the final introduction and representation of the system of complex numbers. To be more specific, Crowe [
4] states that Gauss did not accept his geometric interpretation as the foundation of complex numbers. Bedürftig and Murawski [
1] share this view with reference to the following words of Gauss [
12]: "However, the representation of imaginary magnitudes in the relations of points in plano is not so much their essence itself, which must be understood in a higher and more general way, but rather the purest, or perhaps the only completely pure, example of their applications for us humans."
A corresponding fundamental problem with many of today’s representations is that a real number
x is equated with the vector
therein, which is often taken as identification but lacks rigorous justification. In this context, real numbers are often unfortunately considered as special complex numbers. But the field of complex numbers is, strictly speaking, not an extension field of the real numbers. Some authors say that they "identify" the vector
with the scalar
x or "interpret" it as such, without giving these words a precise and acceptable mathematical content. Conclusions for Euler’s formula and for Riemann’s Zeta function, which result from author’s updating and generalizing complex numbers in [
18] and a series of subsequent papers including those on
-complex numbers, complex numbers in higher dimensions and complex numbers related to semi-antinorms, ellipses or matrix-homogeneous functionals, will be presented here.
Just as Gauss’s ingenious interpretation of complex numbers as points in a number plane [
10,
11] in the form of a suitably formulated axiom found its way into the vector representation of Fourier transforms of probability densities [
19], this is the case with Euler’s formula and Riemann’s Zeta function considered here. The description of the connection between variables through complex numbers, reflected in Euler’s formula [
8] and emphasized by Riemann [
22], is reflected here with great flexibility in the introduction of non-classically generalized complex numbers and the vector representation of the Zeta function based on them. At the same time, it should be emphasized that no undefined or "imaginary" quantities are needed or routinely used for this.
In contrast to the approach of Hamilton [
13] and his numerous successors, the vector product of our non-classically generalized complex numbers is commutative and associative and the whole number system satisfies a weak distributivity property as considered by Hankel [
15], but not the usual strong one.
Although or because the true nature of the so-called "imaginary quantity"
i has been unknown for centuries, the following transformation has become common practice in the literature on complex analysis:
It may not have led to any prominent contradiction since the times of Euler and Gauss. Can it therefore be considered sufficiently proven from a strict mathematical point of view? That would be the case if
i were a real number (satisfying
), but that is exactly what
i is not supposed to be. Using this transformation and the subsequent interpretation adapting Gauss
one arrives at
However, according to the correct definitions of scalar and complex vector-valued vector multiplication as well as vector-valued vector division as in [
18,
19],
differently from (
2),
In this light, the starting point of transformation (
1) may appear to be unmotivated from a rigorous point of view: why should one divide the scalar 1 by the complex number
or ordered pair
or vector
instead of dividing vector
by vector
in a well defined way? The reader might not find the differences between (
1) and (
3) dramatic, but that would not touch the core of the situation.
Classical generalizations of complex numbers often begin by determining the generally non-commutative product for every two or more basic elements. A closed formula or a geometric interpretation of this product within the whole space is generally not a motivating starting point, but has emerged as an interesting aspect in some individual cases. For example, the so-called scalar and vectorial parts of a certain quaternion product reflect a certain Euclidean scalar product and a usual vector product, respectively [
6].
In another upcoming work [21], some of the ideas of this work are transferred to the area of quaternions but using non-commutative products instead of the commutative ones here. In particular, the three imaginary units usually considered in quaternion theory are replaced by three linear independent vectors, whereby the area of the quaternions is also freed from any alchemical approach.
In contrast, the non-classical generalization of complex numbers that are used in the present work begins with the consideration of geometric locations that represent level lines of a norm, antinorm or semi-antinorm
in
, and with movements along such level lines as well as transitions between these lines. The latter are described based on the situation with complex numbers by varying an angle variable or a generalized radius variable and thus motivate the definitions of generalized coordinates and of a vector-valued vector product of generalized complex numbers as well as its inverse operation of a vector-valued vector division. The manifolds and product operations formed in this way build the Lie groups that we will be talking about. The manifolds generated in this work by certain phs-functionals contain the manifolds arising in earlier considerations on hypercomplex numbers and contain the manifolds generated in author’s corresponding work by semi-antinorms, in particular
-functionals for
, or
elliptical functionals as special cases. For numerous figures illustrating these manifolds, we refer to author’s corresponding work. It should be noted that complex numbers in the context of classical coordinate geometry have already been studied in [
16].
Our vector approach to usual and generalized complex numbers which was first described in [
18] for the
-case turns Gauss’s interpretation of complex numbers as points in a number plane into a suitably defined axiom and just starts from a two-dimensional vector space, which we choose
in this paper for the sake of simplicity. In addition, the unexplained classical "imaginary unit"
i from the theory of usual complex numbers is replaced with a well-defined element of the complex plane, that is a vector
The reader is encouraged to always strictly distinguish between the two quantities
i and
. While
is a well defined vector, it is only said with respect to the "imaginary unit"
i that
and
But what kind of squaring could achieve this if, for example, or if we had ? And what kind of addition could be considered in this context to form expressions like ? The classical theory of complex numbers raises more questions than it answers!
The rest of the paper is organized as follows. We introduce a generalized complex algebraic vector structure and a Lie group in
Section 2.
Section 3 deals with a vector representation of Euler’s formula and
Section 4 with one of Riemann’s Zeta function and a generalization of this. Finally we close this paper by a short discussion.