A low-pass filter

A low-pass filter (LPF) is a filter that passes signals with a frequency lower than a certain cutoff frequency and attenuates signals with frequencies higher than the cutoff frequency. The exact frequency response of the filter depends on the filter design. The filter is sometimes called a high-cut filter, or treble-cut filter in audio applications. A low-pass filter is the complement of a high-pass filter.
Low-pass filters exist in many different forms, including electronic circuits such as a hiss filter used in audio, anti-aliasing filters for conditioning signals prior to analog-to-digital conversion, digital filters for smoothing sets of data, acoustic barriers, blurring of images, and so on. The moving average operation used in fields such as finance is a particular kind of low-pass filter, and can be analyzed with the same signal processing techniques as are used for other low-pass filters. Low-pass filters provide a smoother form of a signal, removing the short-term fluctuations, and leaving the longer-term trend.
Filter designers will often use the low-pass form as a prototype filter. That is, a filter with unity bandwidth and impedance. The desired filter is obtained from the prototype by scaling for the desired bandwidth and impedance and transforming into the desired bandform (that is low-pass, high-pass, band-pass or band-stop).

Examples

Examples of low-pass filters occur in acoustics, optics and electronics.

Acoustics

A stiff physical barrier tends to reflect higher sound frequencies, and so acts as a low-pass filter for transmitting sound. When music is playing in another room, the low notes are easily heard, while the high notes are attenuated.

Optics

An optical filter with the same function can correctly be called a low-pass filter, but conventionally is called a longpass filter (low frequency is long wavelength), to avoid confusion.

Electronics

In an electronic low-pass RC filter for voltage signals, high frequencies in the input signal are attenuated, but the filter has little attenuation below the cutoff frequency determined by its RC time constant. For current signals, a similar circuit, using a resistor and capacitor in parallel, works in a similar manner. (See current divider discussed in more detail below.)
Electronic low-pass filters are used on inputs to subwoofers and other types of loudspeakers, to block high pitches that they can't efficiently reproduce. Radio transmitters use low-pass filters to block harmonic emissions that might interfere with other communications. The tone knob on many electric guitars is a low-pass filter used to reduce the amount of treble in the sound. An integrator is another time constant low-pass filter.
Telephone lines fitted with DSL splitters use low-pass and high-pass filters to separate DSL and POTS signals sharing the same pair of wires.
Low-pass filters also play a significant role in the sculpting of sound created by analogue and virtual analogue synthesisers. See subtractive synthesis.