JuliaDiff / JuliaDiff/ForwardDiff.jl

Error trying to differentiate through a `Complex`

Open
#239 8 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

Nobody has claimed this yet.

Dominant language
Julia
Stars
1k
Forks
160
PR merge metrics
No merged PRs in 30d

Description

I need to treat a complex function f: C → C as a function from R^2 to R^2. I am doing this as follows:

julia 0.6> function realify(f)

               function g(x)
                   z = Complex(x[1], x[2])
                   z2 = f(z)
                   SVector(reim(z2))
               end

               return g

           end
realify (generic function with 1 method)

julia 0.6> using StaticArrays

julia 0.6> f(z) = z^3 - 1
f (generic function with 1 method)

julia 0.6> const g = realify(f)
g (generic function with 1 method)

julia 0.6> g(SVector(1, 2))
2-element SVector{2,Int64}:
 -12
  -2

When I try to differentiate this, I get the following error:

julia 0.6> using ForwardDiff

julia 0.6> ForwardDiff.jacobian(g, SVector(1, 2))
ERROR: MethodError: Cannot `convert` an object of type ForwardDiff.Dual{ForwardDiff.Tag{#g#1{#f},0x570e4f4889f9f966},Int64,2} to an object of type Signed
This may have arisen from a call to the constructor Signed(...),
since type constructors fall back to convert methods.
Stacktrace:
 [1] ^(::Complex{ForwardDiff.Dual{ForwardDiff.Tag{#g#1{#f},0x570e4f4889f9f966},Int64,2}}, ::Complex{ForwardDiff.Dual{ForwardDiff.Tag{#g#1{#f},0x570e4f4889f9f966},Int64,2}}) at ./complex.jl:625
 [2] f(::Complex{ForwardDiff.Dual{ForwardDiff.Tag{#g#1{#f},0x570e4f4889f9f966},Int64,2}}) at ./REPL[3]:1
 [3] (::#g#1{#f})(::SVector{2,ForwardDiff.Dual{ForwardDiff.Tag{#g#1{#f},0x570e4f4889f9f966},Int64,2}}) at ./REPL[1]:5
 [4] jacobian(::#g#1{#f}, ::SVector{2,Int64}) at /Users/dpsanders/.julia/v0.6/ForwardDiff/src/jacobian.jl:76

Contributor guide

No contributing guide indexed for this repository

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Reproduce the Julia 0.6 example with realify, f, g, and ForwardDiff.jacobian from the issue. Start at the jacobian entry point and follow the stack trace through the Complex exponentiation path in complex.jl. Done means the realified complex function can be differentiated without the reported conversion error.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
julia
Domain
tooling
Issue type
Bug
Difficulty
3/5
Estimated time
1-2 days
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
38/100

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.