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Bug report: wrong sign in the Fourier transform?

Posted 9 years ago

Dear All,

I hope this is the right place to report a bug in the Wolfram Alpha.

It looks like the Wolfram Alpha produces wrong answer for this question: "Fourier of 1/(t-i)" http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=Fourier+of+1%2F%28t-i%29

It tells me that the Fourier transform of 1/(t-i) is zero for negative frequency, however the correct answer is exactly the opposite -- Fourier transform of 1/(t-i) is zero only for w > 0. (Because the Fourier transform is the integral of exp(-iwt)dt/(f-i) and for w > 0 it should be closed in the lower half of the complex plane which is free of poles in this case, the only pole is t = i).

Maybe the sign of the Fourier transform is defined oppositely in Alpha?

/Alexey

POSTED BY: Alexey Petrenko
2 Replies

Dear Daniel,

Many thanks for the quick reply! Sorry for the stupid question. I see now, this is not a bug, the exponent in the Fourier transform is simply exp(+iwt), not exp(-iwt) as I assumed!

Best regards, /Alexey

POSTED BY: Alexey Petrenko

Wolfram Alpha is going to use Mathematica for the computation. The documented behavior for Mathematica is quite easy to find by web search. Here is the relevant link.

https://reference.wolfram.com/language/ref/FourierTransform.html

Click on Details and Options opener to see information on definition used and parameter settings.

POSTED BY: Daniel Lichtblau
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