Spectral accuracy

A spectral method has spectral accuracy for a class of smooth data when its error decreases faster than any fixed inverse power of the truncation size. For periodic Fourier series, this follows from arbitrarily many integrations by parts when every derivative matches across the periodic boundary. An analytic periodic extension to a complex strip gives exponential coefficient decay. Analyticity inside one period and matching only endpoint values do not suffice: a jump in a derivative of the periodic extension yields algebraic decay instead.