Multiple math accents in exponents

Question

How can I prevent an offset in stacked accents (hat is not in the middle of the tilde)
and how can I typeset the exponent 'a' in the example below not to be so high and near the tilde?

For your convenience the code I am using below:

\documentclass[a4paper,11pt]{article}
\usepackage{amsthm,amsfonts}
\begin{document}
  $$ \hat{\widetilde{A}}^a $$
\end{document}

I solved the first problem and edited the question together with a MWE. — Anne O'Nyme, Oct 23 '18 at 09:34
Maybe this could help to solve the first point https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/121937/hat-and-widehat-look-terrible-fixing-width-and-better-positioning — Edoardo Serra, Oct 23 '18 at 09:42
Don't use \widetilde for this; \tilde is the right option. — egreg, Oct 23 '18 at 12:06
@HenriMenke: I get exactly the same output from latex and from pdflatex. How did you produce your screen shots? — GuM, Nov 01 '18 at 23:58

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Nov 11 '18 at 11:41

For the first problem, either use \tilde instead of \widetilde as egreg suggests or put an empty group before the letter:

\hat{\widetilde{{}A}}

though I would strongly suggest that you use \widehat with \widetilde. To illustrate

\begin{equation*}
  \hat{\tilde{A}} \qquad
  \hat{\widetilde{{}A}} \qquad
  \widehat{\widetilde{{}A}}
\end{equation*}

produces

For the second problem, egreg's approach will give you the superscript at the height you desire. For the cases with \widetilde you can again either add an empty group before the superscript, or more generally a \vphantom:

\begin{equation*}
  \hat{\tilde{A}}^{a} \qquad
  \widehat{\widetilde{{}A}}{}^{a} \qquad
  \widehat{\widetilde{{}A}}\vphantom{A}^{a}
\end{equation*}

All images produced from the following document. Note I have also loaded amsmath.

\documentclass[a4paper,11pt]{article}

\usepackage{amsthm,amsfonts,amsmath}

\begin{document}

\begin{equation*}
  \hat{\tilde{A}} \qquad
  \hat{\widetilde{{}A}} \qquad
  \widehat{\widetilde{{}A}}
\end{equation*}

\begin{equation*}
  \hat{\tilde{A}}^{a} \qquad
  \widehat{\widetilde{{}A}}{}^{a} \qquad
  \widehat{\widetilde{{}A}}\vphantom{A}^{a}
\end{equation*}

\end{document}

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Oct 31 '18 at 16:56

Some dirty hacks, just to stimulate better response.

\documentclass[a4paper,11pt]{article}
\usepackage{amsthm,amsfonts}
\begin{document}
  \[ \hat{\widetilde{A}\,\,}^{\!\raisebox{-.5ex}{$\scriptstyle a$}} \]
  or
   \[ \hat{\tilde{A}\;}^{\hspace{-.15em}\raisebox{-.3ex}{$\scriptstyle a$}} \]
\end{document}

Multiple math accents in exponents

2 Answers2