The dot itself is not an operator, .^
is.
The .^
is a pointwise¹ (i.e. element-wise) power, as .*
is the pointwise product.
.^
Array power.A.^B
is the matrix with elementsA(i,j)
to theB(i,j)
power. The sizes ofA
andB
must be the same or be compatible.
C.f.
- “Array vs. Matrix Operations”: https://mathworks.com/help/matlab/matlab_prog/array-vs-matrix-operations.html
- “Pointwise”: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pointwise
- “Element-Wise Operations”: http://www.glue.umd.edu/afs/glue.umd.edu/system/info/olh/Numerical/Matlab_Matrix_Manipulation_Software/Matrix_Vector_Operations/elementwise
¹) Hence the dot.