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Peter Haggstrom
www.gotohaggstrom.com
mathsatbondibeach@gmail.com
August 13, 2013
1 Introduction
The function sinc x =
as follows:
sin x
x
sinc x =
sin x n1
x=0
=
0 otherwise
x
(1)
The integral of sinc(x) over the whole real line or the half real line causes some calculus Rstudents big problems because
R it looks like it should be simple but it isn t.
Thus sinc x dx = so that 0 sinc x dx = 2 due to the fact that sinc x is even.
Dont even think about using integration by parts or a substitution. It takes complex integration theory or some relatively heavy duty classical analysis to do it properly. The oscillatory nature of sin x is responsible for the difficulties. Serious students of analysis or calculus will want to know the complete proof of why the integral converges but others may be happy with a more practical (ie this works) understanding. If you are doing Fourier Theory you really do need to know how to
derive the integral because it is such a fundamental part of the theory, although I
wont present a proof here as I am more interested in the uniform continuity aspect
of the function. The sinc function appears in lurid green flurorescent form on the
front of Frys electronics store in Sunnyvale, California. Students of Fourier Theory
at Stanford can go and pay homage before it in their spare time! Heres the link:
http://www.frys-electronics-ads.com/cc/stores/view/8/Sunnyvale
The sinc function appears in a wide variery of contexts including signal processing and
probability theory. For instance, the uniform probability distribution on (a, a) has
1
density f (x) = 2a
and hence has characteristic function sinc(a). Recall that the characteristic function of f is defined as:
eix f (x) dx
() =
(2)
() =
a
eix
cos(a) + i sin(a) [cos(a) + i sin(a)]
eix ia
=
f (x) dx =
2a
2ai a
2ai
sin(a)
=
= sinc(a) (3)
a
0.5
-40
-20
20
40
-0.5
-1.0
The uniform probability distribution is a species of the box function that is a fundamental part of Fourier Theory. The box function is also used in filtering signals.
Perhaps one of the most important applications of the sinc function and one which is
of immense interest to electrical engineers is the role it plays in the Sampling Theorem
in Fourier Theory. The Sampling Theorem can be expressed this way. If the Fourier
Transform F () of a signal function f (t) is zero for all frequencies above || B (ie
the signal is band limited) then f (t) can be uniquely determined from its sampled
P
(tnT )
1
values f (t) =
where T = 2B
. This is quite a remarkable
n= f (nT ) sinc T
theorem and more information can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Nyquist-Shannon_sampling_theorem
In quantum theory the sinc function arises in the analysis of a localized wave function
of rectangular shape for a free particle [1]. The wave function is given by (x) =
R
Bk eikx dk where
number k is taken to be a continuous variable. The coeffiR the wave
ikx
cients are Bk = (x) e
dk by virtue of Fourier theory. If the rectangular function
has width b then:
Z
Bk =
b
2
eikx dx =
2b
sin( kb
2 )
k
2
= b sinc(
kb
)
2
(4)
The physical significance of this is that the wave function includes contributions of equal
magnitude from positive and negative values of k. The consequence is that the average
momentum of the particle is zero and the average position of the wave packet will not
move right or left.
cos sin
sin 0
sin x sin y
|=|
| |x y| =
|x y|
x
y
We see that:
(5)
cos sin
| cos | + |sin |
|| + 1
<2
2
2
(6)
since || > 1
Thus for > 0 and 0 < |x y| <
|
ie our =
2
we have:
cos sin
sin x sin y
|=
|x y| < 2|x y| < 2 =
2
x
y
(7)
2
In the interval (1, 1) we can use Taylors theorem to approximate the derivative in the
mean value expression by expanding about zero. The Taylor series expansions are as
follows:
f () = sin =
3
+ R()
3!
(8)
g() = cos = 1
2
0
+ R ()
2!
(9)
Recall that the general form of a Taylor series expansion about 0 looks like this:
0
xn (n)
xn+1 (n+1)
x2 00
f (0) + +
f (0) +
f
(x )
2!
n!
(n + 1)!
(10)
where x (0, x). The last term in (10) is the Lagrange form of the remainder and in the
case of both sin x and cos x the absolute value of the derivative term in the remainder
is bounded by 1 (since the nth derivative is a multiple of sin x or cos x). Thus:
|R()|
||4
4!
||3
|
3!
(11)
cos sin | (1
=
2
3
2
2!
+ R ()) (
||2
| 3 + R () R() |
=
||2
| 3 |
3
3
3!
+ R()) |
3
| |
||
||
+ || |R ()| + |R()|
3 + || 6 + 24
||2
||2
|| 5||2
=
+
< 1 since || < 1 (12)
3
24
0
Going back to (5) we see that if we choose 0 < |x y| < = we will have:
cos sin
sin x sin y
|
|=
|x y| < |x y| <
x
y
2
(13)
So if we choose as our global = 2 , whenever 0 < |x y| < it will follow that | sinx x
sin y
y | < . In this proof we needed to get different estimates for the two tailed intervals
and the middle hump interval. This is not uncommon as the following demonstration
shows.
Note that the interval you choose in relation to a proof of uniform continuity makes
a difference to the type of estimate you need to make. For instance, if we were only
interested in the interval (0, 1), we could use the fact that on this interval sin (in
fact this holds for 0 /2) so that the derivative cos sin
cos2 cos 1
2
cos 1 1. Thus the absolute
value of the derivative is in the interval (0, 1] so that
cos sin
sin y
sin x
| x y |=
|x y| |x y| < . In this case we neednt use Taylors
2
theorem.
3 Proving
that if f is Riemann integrable on every interval [a, b] and
R
|f () f ()| =
f (t) (e2it e2it ) dt
f (t) (e
2it
Z
) dt +
2it
|t|R()
|t|R()
Z
2it
2it
f
(t)
(e
e
)
dt
+
R()
R()
R()
R()
Z
|f (t)| dt + 2R()
2
|t|R()
f (t) (e2it e2it ) dt
sup
2it
2it
f
(t)
(e
e
)
dt
|f (t)(e2it e2it )|
t[R(),R()]
2 + 2R() B()
sup
|(e2it e2it )|
4
t[R(),R()]
+ 2R() B()
sup
|t t| + 4 R()3 B() | | (14)
2
2
t[R(),R()]
Now if we choose | |
8 R()3 B()+1
|g(t)g(t)| = |e2it e2it | = |g (t)| |tt| = |2i e2it | |t| || 2|| |t| ||
(16)
Hence supt[R(),R()] 2|| |t| || 2 R()2 || because is also in [R(), R()].
If we define f (x) = 1 for x [1, 1] and f (x)R = 0 otherwiseR then f clearly satis1
|f ()| d does not converge. So what is |f ()| d? It is none other than the
absolute integral of the sinc function. Thus:
f() =
f (x) e
2ix
Z
dx =
To demonstrate that
2ix
e
1
|f ()| d
e2ix
dx =
2i
#1
=
1
2 sin(2)
2
(17)
n+1
|f()| d
(n+1)
n Z
X
k=0
k+ 38
|f()| d
k+ 18
k=0
n
X
k=0
n Z
X
k+ 38
k+ 18
1
X 2
2
4
d >
3
(k
+
2
2
8)
k=0
X 1
1
1
>
as n (18)
3
2 (k + 8 ) k=0 2 2 (k + 1)
1 .
2
3. Third, the term 1 in the integrand in each sub-interval dominates the rectangular box
1
formed by using the right-hand -value, eg, the first box has area 14 (k+1 3 ) > 14 (k+1)
.
All subsequent boxes have the same width of 41 .
4 Concluding remarks
Although we have established by laborious techniques that sinc x is uniformly
continuous, if we had known some Fourier theory we could have ridden on the coat tails
of a general theorem about the uniform continuty of Fourier transforms to get to the
same result. The oscillatoryR nature of the sin function is sufficient in combination with x1
to ensure that the integral sinc x dx converges but the decay of x1 is not sufficiently
fast to ensure that the integral of the absolute value of the function converges.
5 References
[1] A P French and Edwin F Taylor , An Introduction ot Quantum Physics, Van Nostrand, 1987, pages 331- 336
[2] T W K
orner, Fourier Analysis, Cambridge University Press, 1988.
6 Appendix
Note that for x [/2, /2], | sin x| |x|. The following diagram which deals with
sin x on the interval [0, 2 ] demonstrates the inequality.