Josh Hoffmann

LATEX

Fourier Series

Waves occur a lot in nature, so naturally wed like to be able to represent

them mathematically. However they come in many shapes and sizes. The
Fourier Series deals with representing periodic waves mathematically.
Some types of periodic waves include:
Square Waves.
Triangle Waves.
Saw-Tooth Waves.
We may now start to think about how to mathematically represent periodic waves. The idea behind the Fourier series is that all periodic waves
can be composed from a combination of sine and cosine waves. Its basically
using sine and cosine waves as the building blocks of another wave. A bit
like the components of a vector. I will include the derivation of the Fourier
series in the appendix, but for now take this as a postulate.
Any periodic function
f (x)
(1)
with a period
p = 2L

f (x) = a0 +

an cos(

n=1

(2)

nx
nx
) + bn sin(
)
L
L

(3)

Here n is a natural number i.e.

n N, n = 1, 2, 3....

(4)

and (a0 , an , bn ) are called the Fourier coefficients and they are defined
as follows...
1
2L

a0 =

f (x)dx

1
bn =
L

f (x) cos(

nx
)dx
L

(6)

f (x) sin(

nx
)dx
L

(7)

L
L

(5)

1
L

an =

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