I want to use a tangent function to create a waveform that always passes itself back to -1 at the end of each cycle to 1.
When a tangent function only moves between -1 and 1, there is a gap left between each tangent path on the x axis.
I perfectly filled the area by simply using a second tangent of n + pi/2 which filled the region, to create the repeating tangent I wanted.
I then tried to combine the formulas using the minimum function, but it seems to cut the graph in half, all values above 0 are just missing, which is not what I want.
How can I get a repeating tangent between y -1 and 1 that never has x axis gaps?
(I drew the y > 1 and y < -1 to represent my use case, where any value below -1 and above 1 are useless)
My end goal is to create a formula that can essentially do this:
Best Answer
Consider one branch of the tangent function. You're restricting the range of $\tan(x)$ to $[-1,1]$, which means $x\in\left[-\frac\pi4,\frac\pi4\right]$.
Since $\tan(x) = \tan(x\pm n\pi)$ for integer $n$, restricting the range to $[-1,1]$ for the entire plot of $\tan(x)$ would make for a domain of $\cdots\cup\left[-\frac{5\pi}4,-\frac{3\pi}4\right]\cup\left[-\frac\pi4,\frac\pi4\right]\cup\left[\frac{3\pi}4,\frac{5\pi}4\right]\cdots$. We can write this compactly by observing
$$x\in\left[-\frac{5\pi}4,-\frac{3\pi}4\right] \implies -\frac\pi4 \le x+\pi \le\frac\pi4 \implies |x+\pi| \le\frac\pi4$$
$$x \in \left[-\frac\pi4, \frac\pi4\right] \implies -\frac\pi4 \le x \le \frac\pi4 \implies |x| \le \frac\pi4$$
$$x\in\left[\frac{3\pi}4,\frac{5\pi}4\right] \implies -\frac\pi4 \le x-\pi \le\frac\pi4 \implies |x-\pi| \le\frac\pi4$$
and so on, such that the restricted domain is $|x+n\pi|\le\frac\pi4$, where $n$ is an integer.
We can fill in the gaps by shifting $\tan(x)$ by $\frac\pi2$, as the other answer suggests. Then we could define this function piecewise as
$$\operatorname{smoothtan}(x) = \begin{cases} \tan(x) & \text{if } |x+n\pi|\le\frac\pi4 \quad (n\in\mathbb Z) \\ \tan\left(x\pm\frac\pi2\right) & \text{otherwise}\end{cases}$$
(though "smooth" is not the best name for this function)