Development of a complex function theory upon a new concept of polar-analytic functions; Extended version

The present article is an extended version of [6] containing new results and an updated list of references. We review the notion of polar analyticity introduced in a previous paper and succesfully applied in Mellin analysis and quadrature formulae for functions defined on the positive real axis. This appears as a simple way to describe functions which are analytic on a part of the Riemann surface of the logarithm. In this paper we launch a proposal to develop a complete complex function theory, independent of classical function theory, which is built upon the new concept of polar analyticity.