The angle property of positive real (rational) functions

, namely, that

in the right half of the

-plane, can be demonstrated very simply by an examination of the imaginary parts of the functions

and

, i.e.,

. In particular, on a contour enclosing the entire first quadrant,

can rather easily be shown to be nonnegative. The extremum theorem of analytic functions then assures that

cannot be negative inside the first quadrant; thus the angle property is demonstrated in the first quadrant. The same result is obtained immediately in the fourth quadrant.