[Math] What function has fourier series the harmonic series

fa.functional-analysisfourier analysis

I know that this is on the boundaries of what's allowed, but hopefully someone'll answer before it gets closed!

What (periodic) function has Fourier series the harmonic series? I really want the even (cosine) terms to be the harmonic series and no odd terms.

Edit: so that the record is perfectly clear, what I wanted was a function with Fourier series

$$
\sum_{n \ge 1} \frac{1}{n} \cos(n \pi t)
$$

Best Answer

It's a standard series computation to show that

$$ \sum_{n \ge 1} \frac{x^n}{n} = \log \frac{1}{1 - x} $$

Now substitute $x = e^{i t}$ and take the real part.

(As an aside, the reason I write the identity this way is that this is the version which is combinatorially significant.)

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