First Course in Harmonic Analysis

This book is intended as a primer in harmonic analysis at the un- dergraduate level. All the central concepts of harmonic analysis are introduced without too much technical overload. For example, the book is based entirely on the Riemann integral instead of the more demanding Lebesgue integral. Furthermore, all topological questions are dealt with purely in the context of metric spaces. It is quite sur- prising that this works. Indeed, it turns out that the central concepts theory can be explained using very little of this beautiful and useful technical background. The first aim of this book is to give a lean introduction to Fourier analysis, leading up to the Poisson summation formula. The sec- ond aim is to make the reader aware of the fact that both principal incarnations of Fourier Theory, the Fourier series and the Fourier transform, are special cases of a more general theory arising in the context of locally compact abelian groups. The third goal of this book is to introduce the reader to the techniques used in harmonic analysis of noncommutative groups. These techniques are explained in the context of matrix groups as a principal example.