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A Fourier series (/ ˈ f ʊr i eɪ,-i ər / [1]) is an expansion of a periodic function into a sum of trigonometric functions. The Fourier series is an example of a trigonometric series. [2] By expressing a function as a sum of sines and cosines, many problems involving the function become easier to analyze because trigonometric functions are ...
An Elementary Treatise on Fourier's Series: And Spherical, Cylindrical, and Ellipsoidal Harmonics, with Applications to Problems in Mathematical Physics (2 ed.). Ginn. p. 30. Carslaw, Horatio Scott (1921). "Chapter 7: Fourier's Series". Introduction to the Theory of Fourier's Series and Integrals, Volume 1 (2 ed.). Macmillan and Company. p. 196.
A fundamental question about Fourier series, asked by Fourier himself at the beginning of the 19th century, is whether the Fourier series of a continuous function converges pointwise to the function. By strengthening the continuity assumption slightly one can easily show that the Fourier series converges everywhere.
A generalized Fourier series is the expansion of a square integrable function into a sum of square integrable orthogonal basis functions. The standard Fourier series uses an orthonormal basis of trigonometric functions , and the series expansion is applied to periodic functions.
See also list of Fourier analysis topics and list of Fourier-related transforms, which are more directed towards the classical Fourier series and Fourier transform of mathematical analysis, mathematical physics and engineering.
In mathematical analysis, Parseval's identity, named after Marc-Antoine Parseval, is a fundamental result on the summability of the Fourier series of a function. The identity asserts the equality of the energy of a periodic signal (given as the integral of the squared amplitude of the signal) and the energy of its frequency domain representation (given as the sum of squares of the amplitudes).
Even more generally, given an abelian locally compact group G with Pontryagin dual G^, Parseval's theorem says the Pontryagin–Fourier transform is a unitary operator between Hilbert spaces L 2 (G) and L 2 (G^) (with integration being against the appropriately scaled Haar measures on the two groups.)
A number of authors, notably Jean le Rond d'Alembert, and Carl Friedrich Gauss used trigonometric series to study the heat equation, [20] but the breakthrough development was the 1807 paper Mémoire sur la propagation de la chaleur dans les corps solides by Joseph Fourier, whose crucial insight was to model all functions by trigonometric series ...