Introduction to LATEX

2006
c by Harvey Gould
December 5, 2006

1 Introduction
TEX looks more difficult than it is. It is almost as easy as π. See how easy it is to
make special symbols such as α, β, γ, δ, sin x, h̄, λ, . . . We also can make subscripts
2 b
Ax , Axy and superscripts, ex , ex , and ea . We will use LATEX, which is based on
TEX and has many higher-level commands (macros) for formatting, making tables,
etc. More information can be found in Ref. [1].
We just made a new paragraph. Extra lines and spaces make no difference. Note
that all formulas are enclosed by $ and occur in math mode.
The default font is Computer Modern. It includes italics, boldface, slanted,
and monospaced fonts.

2 Equations
Let us see how easy it is to write equations.
N
X
∆= wi (xi − x̄)2 . (1)
i=1

It is a good idea to number equations, but we can have a equation without a number
by writing
x−a
P (x) = ,
b−a
and
1√
g= 2π.
2
We can give an equation a label so that we can refer to it later.
N
X
E = −J si si+1 , (2)
i=1

1
Equation (2) expresses the energy of a configuration of spins in the Ising model.1
We can define our own macros to save typing. For example, suppose that we
introduce the macros:

\newcommand{\lb}{{\langle}}
\newcommand{\rb}{{\rangle}}

Then we can write the average value of x as

\begin{equation}
\lb x \rb = 3
\end{equation}

The result is
hxi = 3. (3)
Examples of more complicated equations:
Z ∞
I= f (x) dx. (4)
−∞

We can do some fine tuning by adding small amounts of horizontal spacing:

\, small space \! negative space

as is done in Eq. (4).

We also can align several equations:
a=b (5)
c = d, (6)
or number them as subequations:
a=b (7a)
c = d. (7b)

We can also have different cases:

(
0 T > Tc
m(T ) =
1/8 (8)
1 − [sinh 2βJ]−4 T < Tc
1
It is necessary to process (typeset) a file twice to get the counters correct.

2
write matrices
 
T++ T+−
T= ,
T−+ T−−
 β(J+B) −βJ 
e e
= −βJ . (9)
e eβ(J−B)

and X Z Z
~·B
A ~ = −P r · n̂ dA = P ~ · r dV.
∇ (10)
i

3 Tables
Tables are a little more difficult. TeX automatically calculates the width of the
columns.

lattice d q Tmf /Tc

square 2 4 1.763
triangular 2 6 1.648
diamond 3 4 1.479
simple cubic 3 6 1.330
bcc 3 8 1.260
fcc 3 12 1.225

Table 1: Comparison of the mean-field predictions for the critical temperature of

the Ising model with exact results and the best known estimates for different spatial
dimensions d and lattice symmetries.

4 Lists
Some example of formatted lists include the following:

1. bread

2. cheese

3
 • Tom

• Dick

5 Literal text
It is desirable to print program code exactly as it is typed in a monospaced font.
Use \begin{verbatim}and \end{verbatim}as in the following example:

double y0 = 10; // example of declaration and assignment statement

double v0 = 0; // initial velocity
double t = 0; // time
double dt = 0.01; // time step
double y = y0;

The command \verbatiminput{programs/Square.java}\allows you to list the file

Square.java in the directory programs.

6 Special Symbols
6.1 Common Greek letters
These commands may be used only in math mode. Only the most common letters
are included here.
α, β, γ, Γ, δ, ∆, , ζ, η, θ, Θ, κ, λ, Λ, µ, ν, ξ, Ξ, π, Π, ρ, σ, τ, φ, Φ, χ, ψ, Ψ, ω, Ω

6.2 Special symbols

The derivative is defined as
dy ∆y
= lim (11)
dx ∆x→0 ∆x
f (x) → y as x → x0 (12)
f (x) −→ y (13)
x→x0

Order of magnitude:
log10 f ' n (14)

4
 f (x) ∼ 10n (15)
Approximate equality:
f (x) ' g(x) (16)
LATEX is simple if we keep everything in proportion:

f (x) ∝ x3 . (17)

Finally we can skip some space by using commands such as

\bigskip \medskip \smallskip \vspace{1pc}

The space can be negative.

7 Use of Color
We can change colors for emphasis, but who is going pay for the ink?
Your LaTeX document can be easily modified to make a poster or a screen
presentation similar to (and better than) PowerPoint. Conversion to HTML is
straightforward. Comments on this tutorial are appreciated.

References
[1] Helmut Kopka and Patrick W. Daly, A Guide to LATEX: Document Preparation
for Beginners and Advanced Users, fourth edition, Addison-Wesley (2004).

[2] Some useful links are given at .

Updated 5 December 2006.