DIRAC BRUSHES (OR, THE FRACTIONAL FOURIER TRANSFORM OF DIRAC COMBS) JOE VIOLA Abstract. In analogy with the Poisson summation formula, we identify when the fractional Fourier transform, applied to a Dirac comb in dimension one, gives a discretely supported measure. We describe the resulting series of com- plex multiples of delta functions, and through either the metaplectic represen- tation of SL(2; Z) or the Bargmann transform, we see that the the identification of these measures is equivalent to the functional equation for the Jacobi theta functions. In tracing the values of the antiderivative in certain small-angle limits, we observe Euler spirals, and on a smaller scale, these spirals are made up of Gauss sums which give the coefficient in the aforementioned functional equation. Contents 1. Introduction 1 2. Direct proof of Theorems 1.2 and 1.3 7 3. Using the metaplectic representation of SL(2; R) 9 4. Evaluation of the coefficient µ 20 5. The Bargmann transform 25 6. Periodicity and parity 28 7. Questions of continuity in α 29 8. Numerics around approximations to irrational cotangents 39 References 41 1. Introduction 1.1. Setting and main results. For r > 0, we consider the Dirac comb p arXiv:1812.05346v1 [math.CA] 13 Dec 2018 X (1.1) xr(x) = r δ(x − rk) k2Z 0 as a distribution in the dualp Schwartz space S (R), meaning that the Dirac comb is defined via its action f 7! r P f(rk) on rapidly decaying smooth functions. k2Z We write the Fourier transform as Z (1.2) Ff(ξ) = i−1=2 e−2πixξf(x) dx Universite´ de Nantes, CNRS, Laboratoire de Mathematiques´ Jean Leray (LMJL - UMR 6629), F-44000 Nantes, France E-mail address:
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