11.8.1 LaTeX fragments

Org mode can contain LaTeX math fragments, and it supports ways to process these for several export back-ends. When exporting to LaTeX, the code is left as it is. When exporting to HTML, Org can use either MathJax (see Math formatting in HTML export) or transcode the math into images (see see Previewing LaTeX fragments).

LaTeX fragments don’t need any special marking at all. The following snippets will be identified as LaTeX source code:

• Environments of any kind¹²¹. The only requirement is that the \begin statement appears on a new line, at the beginning of the line or after whitespaces only.
• Text within the usual LaTeX math delimiters. To avoid conflicts with currency specifications, single ‘$’ characters are only recognized as math delimiters if the enclosed text contains at most two line breaks, is directly attached to the ‘$’ characters with no whitespace in between, and if the closing ‘$’ is followed by whitespace or punctuation (parentheses and quotes are considered to be punctuation in this context). For the other delimiters, there is no such restriction, so when in doubt, use ‘\(...\)’ as inline math delimiters.

For example:

\begin{equation}
x=\sqrt{b}
\end{equation}

If $a^2=b$ and \( b=2 \), then the solution must be
either $$ a=+\sqrt{2} $$ or \[ a=-\sqrt{2} \].

LaTeX processing can be configured with the variable org-export-with-latex. The default setting is t which means MathJax for HTML, and no processing for ASCII and LaTeX back-ends. You can also set this variable on a per-file basis using one of these lines:

#+OPTIONS: tex:t          Do the right thing automatically (MathJax)
#+OPTIONS: tex:nil        Do not process LaTeX fragments at all
#+OPTIONS: tex:verbatim   Verbatim export, for jsMath or so