Radical (mathematics)
See radical for other uses of the term
In
mathematics, the
n-th
root or
radical of the non-negative
real number a, written as , is the unique non-negative real number
b such that
bn=
a. See
square root for the case where
n=2.
Operations with radicals are given by the following formulas:
where
a and
b are positive.
To every non-zero complex number a there are n different complex numbers b such that bn = a, so the symbol cannot be used unambiguously. The n-th roots of unity are of particular importance.