Chapter 2

Useful properties and theorems

2.1 The Dirichlet conditions

Not all functions can be Fourier-transformed. They are transformable if they
fulfil certain conditions, known as the Dirichlet conditions.
The integrals which formally define the Fourier transform in Chapter 1 will
exist if the integrands fulfil the following conditions: ∞
The functions F(x) and Φ( p) are square-integrable, i.e. −∞ | F(x) |2 d x is
finite, which implies that F(x) → 0 as | x |→ ∞
F(x) and Φ( p) are single-valued. For example a function such as that in Fig. 2.1
is not Fourier-transformable:
F(x) and Φ( p) are ‘piece-wise continuous’. The function can be broken up into
separate pieces, so that there can be isolated discontinuities, as many as you
like, at the junctions, but the functions must be continuous in the mathematical
sense, between these discontinuities1 .
The functions F(x) and Φ( p) have upper and lower bounds.
This is a condition which is sufficient but has not been proved necessary. In
fact we shall assume that it is not. The Dirac δ-function, for instance, disobeys
this condition. No engineer or physicist has yet lost sleep over this one.
In Nature, all the phenomena that can be described mathematically seem to
require only well-behaved functions which obey the Dirichlet conditions. For
example, we can describe the electric field of a wave-packet2 by a function which
is continuous, finite and single-valued everywhere, and as the wave-packet
contains only a finite amount of energy, the electric field is square-integrable.
1 The classical nonconformist example is Weierstrass’s function, W (x), which has the property
that W (x) = 1 if x is rational and W (x) = 0 if x is irrational. It looks like a straight line but it is
not transformable, since it can be shown that between any two rational numbers, however close,
there is at least one irrational number, and between any two irrational numbers there is at least
one rational number, so that the function is everywhere discontinuous.
2 I have deliberately avoided the word ‘photon’, for fear of causing apoplexy among strict quantum
theory purists.

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