Doubly periodic function
In mathematics, a doubly periodic function is a function defined on the complex plane and having two "periods", which are complex numbers "u" and "v" that are linearly independent as vectors over the field of real numbers. That "u" and "v" are periods of a function "ƒ" means that for all values of the complex number "z". The doubly periodic function is thus a two-dimensional extension of the simpler singly periodic function, which repeats itself in a single dimension. Familiar examples of functions with a single period on the real number line include the trigonometric functions  like cosine and sine. In the complex plane the exponential function "e" is a singly periodic function, with period 2"πi". As an arbitrary mapping from pairs of reals (or complex numbers) to reals, a doubly periodic function can be constructed with little effort. For example, assume that the periods are 1 and "i", so that the repeating lattice is the set of unit squares with vertices at the Gaussian integers. Values in the prototype square (i.e. "x" + "iy" where 0 ≤ "x" < 1 and 0 ≤ "y" < 1) can be assigned rather arbitrarily and then 'copied' to  adjacent squares. This function will then be necessarily doubly periodic. If the vectors 1 and "i" in this example are replaced by linearly independent vectors "u" and "v", the prototype square becomes a prototype parallelogram that still tiles the plane. The "origin" of the lattice of parallelograms does not have to be the point 0: the lattice can start from any point. In other words, we can think of the plane and its associated functional values as remaining fixed, and mentally translate the lattice to gain insight into the function's characteristics. If a doubly periodic function is also a  complex function that satisfies the Cauchy–Riemann equations and provides an analytic function away from some set of isolated poles – in other words, a meromorphic function – then a lot of information about such a function can be obtained by applying some basic theorems from complex analysis.