Fourier sine and cosine series

In mathematics, particularly the field of calculus and Fourier analysis, the Fourier sine and cosine series are two mathematical series named after Joseph Fourier.

Notation

In this article, f denotes a real valued function on $\mathbb {R}$ which is periodic with period 2L.

Sine series

If f(x) is an odd function, then the Fourier sine series of f is defined to be

$f(x)=\sum _{n=1}^{\infty }c_{n}\sin {\frac {n\pi x}{L}}$

where

$c_{n}={\frac {2}{L}}\int _{0}^{L}f(x)\sin {\frac {n\pi x}{L}}\,dx,n\in \mathbb {N}$.

Cosine series

If f(x) is an even function, then the Fourier cosine series is defined to be

$f(x)={\frac {c_{0}}{2}}+\sum _{n=1}^{\infty }c_{n}\cos {\frac {n\pi x}{L}}$

where

$c_{n}={\frac {2}{L}}\int _{0}^{L}f(x)\cos {\frac {n\pi x}{L}}\,dx,n\in \mathbb {N} _{0}$.

Remarks

This notion can be generalized to functions which are not even or odd, but then the above formulas will look different.

See also

• Fourier series
• Fourier analysis