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1.4 Orthogonality of Sines and Cosines
1.4 Orthogonality of Sines and Cosines
In this section we shall show that certain sequences of sine and cosine functions are orthogonal on certain
intervals. The resulting expansions
(1) f = cjj
using these sines and cosines become the Fourier series expansions of the function f. First, we just
consider the functions n(x) = cos nx. These are orthogonal on the interval 0 < x < . The resulting
expansion (1) is called the Fourier cosine series expansion of f and will be considered in more detail in
section 1.5.
Proposition 1. The functions 0(x) = 1, 1(x) = cos x, 2(x) = cos 2x, 3(x) = cos 3x, …, n(x) = cos nx, …
are orthogonal on the interval 0 < x < . Furthermore | 0 |2 = and | n |2 = for n = 1, 2, … .
Proof. Using the first identity in (8) of section 1.3 one has ( n(x), m(x)) = cos(nx) cos(mx) dx = + cos(n-
m)x] dx = = 0 so the n are orthogonal. The fact that | 0 |2 = is an easy verification. | n |2 = cos2(nx) dx
= [1 + cos 2nx] dx = = . //
Next, we just consider the functions n(x) = sin nx. These are also orthogonal on the interval 0 < x < .
The resulting expansion (1) is called the Fourier sine series expansion of f and will be considered in more
detail in section 1.7.
Proposition 2. The functions 1(x) = sin x, 2(x) = sin 2x, 3(x) = sin 3x, …, n(x) = sin nx, … are
orthogonal on the interval 0 < x < . Furthermore, | n |2 = for n = 1, 2, … .
Proof. Using the second identity in (8) of section 1.3 one has ( n(x), m(x)) = sin(nx) sin(mx) dx = -
cos(n-m)x] dx = = 0 so the n are orthogonal. | n |2 = sin 2(nx) dx = [1 - cos 2nx] dx = = . //
Finally, we consider the functions n(x) = cos nx and n(x) = sin nx. These are orthogonal on the interval
- < x < . The resulting expansion (1) is called the Fourier series expansion of f and will be considered
in more detail in section 1.8.
Proposition 3. The functions 0(x) = 1, 1(x) = cos x, 2(x) = cos 2x, 3(x) = cos 3x, …, n(x) = cos nx, …
and 1(x) = sin x, 2(x) = sin 2x, 3(x) = sin 3x, …, n(x) = sin nx, … are orthogonal on the interval
- < x < . Furthermore | 0 |2 = 2 and | n |2 = | n |2 = for n = 1, 2, … .
Proof. The fact that (n(x), m(x)) = 0 and (n(x), m(x)) = 0 is shown in the same way as Propositions 1
and 2. For (n(x), m(x)) we use the third identity in (8) of section 1.3 giving ( n(x), m(x)) = = - sin(m-
n)x] dx = = 0. The fact that | 0 |2 = 2 is an easy verification and the fact that | n |2 = | n |2 = is shown
in the same way as Propositions 1 and 2. //
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