In MATLAB, which operator is used for element-wise exponentiation?

In MATLAB, the operator used for element-wise exponentiation is the dot caret, which is represented as .^ This operator allows you to raise each element of an array or matrix to the power of another array or scalar element-wise. For example, if you have an array A and you want to raise each element of A to the second power, you would use A .^ 2, resulting in a new array where every individual element of A has been squared.

This element-wise operation is crucial for performing computations across arrays without the need for looping structures, making MATLAB particularly powerful for matrix and vector mathematics. In contrast, the caret operator (^) on its own is used for matrix exponentiation, which only applies to square matrices.

The use of exp() is for calculating the exponential function e raised to the power of each element in an array, but it does not perform exponentiation in the same sense as raising bases to specified powers. Similarly, pow() is not a MATLAB function; it is found in languages like C and C++ for exponentiation, but it does not apply within the context of MATLAB.