There is nothing special about complex numbers in quantum mechanics. You can get rid of them by adding an extra dimension to the Hilbert space.
That doesn’t seem true without causing SU(n) to lose its privileged status as the transformation group on quantum states.
Different formalisms may be more or less convenient for reasoning about certain concepts. Of course there is a reason physicists keep using complex numbers in QM.
There is nothing special about complex numbers in quantum mechanics. You can get rid of them by adding an extra dimension to the Hilbert space.
That doesn’t seem true without causing SU(n) to lose its privileged status as the transformation group on quantum states.
Different formalisms may be more or less convenient for reasoning about certain concepts. Of course there is a reason physicists keep using complex numbers in QM.