ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Complex torus

A complex torus is like a donut, but instead of being made of dough, it is made of complex numbers. But what are complex numbers? Well, you know how normal numbers are just like 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and so on? Complex numbers are like normal numbers, but they have an extra part to them. This extra part is called the imaginary part and it's kind of like a special ingredient in a recipe.

So, imagine you are making some cake and you need to add sugar to it. You take some flour, some eggs, and some sugar and mix them all together to make the cake batter. But what if I told you that there was a special kind of sugar you could use that has an extra special flavor? That's kind of what the imaginary part of a complex number is like. It's like adding a special flavor to your number.

Now, back to the complex torus. We know that it's like a donut made of complex numbers, but what does that mean? Well, it means that we take two complex numbers and use them to create a shape. We can think of these two complex numbers as the length and the width of the torus. But, unlike a normal torus, the complex torus can have a lot of different shapes depending on the numbers we use.

Let's say we take the two complex numbers (1 + i) and (2 + 3i) and use them to make a complex torus. The torus we get will be a little bit tall and skinny because one of our complex numbers has a bigger imaginary part than the other. But, if we change our complex numbers to something like (2 + i) and (1 + 2i), then we will get a shorter, fatter torus.

It's kind of like you can make a lot of different donuts depending on what ingredients you use. You can add chocolate chips, sprinkles, or even fill them with jelly. In the same way, you can create a lot of different complex tori depending on the complex numbers you use.

So, that's what a complex torus is like – it's like a donut made of special numbers that can have a lot of different shapes.