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What Is the Fourier Transform?

(www.quantamagazine.org)
474 points rbanffy | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.2s | source
1. niemandhier ◴[] No.45135191[source]
The Fouriertransform is a change of bases in infinite dimensional space.

That sounds complicated but if you look at the integral the exponential kernel is essentially a continuous “matrix” and the function you are integrating over that kernel is a continuous vector.

This observation on can be a guide to better understand infinite dimensional Hilbert spaces ( inner product space + stuff) and is one of the core observations in quantum mechanics where it’s part of the particle-wave concept as it transforms location space -> momentum space.