TITLE: how do you do this integral from fourier transform.
QUESTION [7 upvotes]: I am trying to find the fourier transform of $$\frac{\sin(ax)}{x}$$ for $a >0$.
This is clearly an even function so we only need to do the real part, but I could not evaluate
$$\int_{-\infty}^{\infty} \cos(kx) \sin(ax) \frac{dx}{x}. $$
Can someone please help me? I tried wolfram alpha but it only gave an answer which is not very helpful.

REPLY [5 votes]: We have that 
$$\cos(kx)\sin(ax) = \frac{\sin((a-k)x)}{2}+\frac{\sin((a+k)x)}{2}$$
So put in a different form we have that 
$$\int_{\Bbb{R}}\frac{\cos(kx)\sin(ax)}{x}dx = \int_{\Bbb{R}}\frac{\sin((a-k)x)+\sin((a+k)x)}{2x} ~~dx$$
We also know that because of the identity:
$$\int_{\Bbb{R}^+}\frac{f(t)}{t} = \int_{\Bbb{R}^+}\mathcal{L}\{f\}$$
And that $\mathcal{L}[\sin(ax)](s) = \frac a {s^2 +a^2},$ where $\mathcal{L} $ represents the Laplace transform that
$$\int_{\Bbb{R}}\frac {\sin(ax)}{x} = \int_{\Bbb{R}}\frac a {x^2 + a^2} = \left.\arctan\left(\frac x a\right)\right|_{-\infty}^\infty = \pi \operatorname{sgn}(a)$$
Making the resulting integral:
$$\frac{\pi(\operatorname{sgn}(a-k)+\operatorname{sgn}(a+k))}2$$