Hmm, this indeed seems to be the case! I think I was confused by ln(1), since 1 is a real number, but the multi-valued complex logarithm of 1 is indeed k 2pi (and now I see the appropriate notation should be "log" instead of "ln"). Perhaps the whole thing could indeed be reduced to "1^x" with an asterisk that 1^x means complex exponentiation. I'll have to update this section in the post.