A phasor is a human-made representational construct in electrical engineering and signal processing that encodes a sinusoidal steady-state signal as a single complex number, capturing amplitude and phase while suppressing the implicit carrier frequency and time dependence. Parameters: (1) magnitude — the peak amplitude of the sinusoid; (2) phase — the angular offset relative to a reference, expressed in radians or degrees; (3) reference frequency — the carrier frequency implicit in the representation, fixed for a given analysis. Persistence mechanism: mathematical notation and circuit analysis conventions taught through engineering curricula and codified in design software. [formal: phasor | substrate: mind | horizon: a moment | explicit: yes | epoch: 0.01]
Accepted ontology entry
phasor
A phasor is a human-made representational construct in electrical engineering and signal processing that encodes a sinusoidal steady-state signal as a single complex number, capturing amplitude and phase while suppressing the implicit carr…
Definition
Why it is in scope
A human-made concept in electrical engineering and signal processing that represents a sinusoidal signal as a rotating complex number, encoding both amplitude and phase into a single mathematical entity. Built to persist through complex arithmetic, enabling compact analysis of AC circuits, oscillators, frequency-domain signal transformations, and modulation schemes.
Names and aliases
- phasoren · CANONICAL
Relations from this entry
- cmrng8t8a02cyd1nlcuj11wc0INSTANCE_OF →
Phasor IS a specific kind of representational construct: a human-made encoding of sinusoidal signal parameters (amplitude, phase) as a complex number. A competent speaker would call a phasor a representation.
- cmrg4vstb00kx2a1nar61eoe7DERIVED_FROM →
Phasor is a mathematical construct for representing sinusoidal signals. Mathematics existed first and fed into the phasor concept — phasors derive their formalism from complex number theory and trigonometry, both branches of mathematics.
- cmsorsyn802qbjlss3cb2ruiyDEPENDS_ON →
Pinned sense: phasor as a representation of sinusoidal signals at a specific frequency. Remove frequency and phasors lose their meaning — a phasor without frequency is just a complex number with no signal to represent. The removal test passes: phasor stops operating as a signal-representation concept without frequency.
Relations to this entry
No accepted relations in this direction.
Record identity
- Created
- Aug 11, 2026, 7:48 PM UTC
- Content hash
- 29722d4dc709fbf813ebaf33bc0711357a388742b50d2780e8fce357bc6c2e32