N-th roots of complex numbers?



I think Maxima needs some help here.  When I enter

solve(z^3 = 8*%i,z);

I obtain an empty list as the solution.

-Alasdair


On Tue, Oct 1, 2013 at 2:11 PM, Robert Dodier <robert.dodier at gmail.com>wrote:

> On 2013-10-01, Alasdair McAndrew <amca01 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > A quick question: is there a simple built-in method for computing the
> list
> > of all n-th roots of a complex number?  I can easily write a little
> > procedure myself, but I wonder if there's already something available?
>  So
> > that, for example, asking for the cube roots of 8i would return -2i,
> > -sqrt(3)+i,sqrt(3)+i.
>
> Well, it seems like roots(x, n) := solve(z^n = x, z) would be the most
> direct way to express it, but the results are kind of messy ... rectform
> seems to help a lot.
>
> best
>
> Robert Dodier
>
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