Normalized angle integration on the circle

ID: normalized-angle-integration-on-the-circle

On the circle group , normalized Haar measure is the pushforward measure of uniform angle on . For a continuous function , define
The factor makes the integral of the constant function equal to . For , a change of angle gives
The last equality uses the -periodic function . Since the circle group is an abelian group, this also verifies right invariance. An arc of angular length has normalized Haar measure . In particular, the arc and its quarter-turn both have measure .
Figure 1.
A quarter-turn changes the position of an arc but preserves its normalized Haar measure
. Multiplication by carries the blue arc onto the orange arc. Both span and have Haar measure . The diagram is generated by circle-group-rotation-invariance.py. Details.
The continuous unitary characters , indexed by integers, give a fully computed family of integrals:
Here must be an integer, so is well defined and . Every nonconstant mode cancels exactly over a full turn. For example, the integral of is , and the integral of is . More generally,
This is the orthogonality of complex exponentials underlying the Fourier basis and Fourier series: invariant averaging separates distinct frequencies and retains the constant component.

New to topics? Read the docs here!