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In mathematics, Banach spaces, named after Stefan Banach who studied them, are one of the central objects of study in functional analysis. Banach spaces are typically infinite-dimensional spaces containing functions.
Banach spaces are defined as complete normed vector spaces. This means that a Banach space is a vector space V over the real or complex numbers with a norm ||.|| such that every Cauchy sequence (with respect to the metric d(x, y) = ||x - y||) in V has a limit in V.
Throughout, let K stand for one of the fields R or C.
The familiar Euclidean spaces Kn, where the Euclidean norm of x = (x1, ..., xn) is given by ||x|| = (∑ |xi|2)1/2, are Banach spaces.
The space of all continuous functions f : [a, b] → K defined on a closed intervalTopology In elementary algebra, an interval is a set that contains every real number between two indicated numbers, and possibly the two numbers themselves. Interval notation is where the permitted values for a variable are expressed as ranging over an in [a, b] becomes a Banach space if we define the norm of such a function as
||f|| = sup { |f(x)| : x in [a, b] }. This is indeed a norm since continuous functions defined on a closed interval are bounded. The space is complete under this norm, and the resulting Banach space is denoted by C[a, b]. This example can be generalized to the space C(X) of all continuous functions X → K, where X is a compact spaceIn mathematics, a compact space is a space that resembles a closed and bounded subset of Euclidean space R n in that it is "small" in a certain sense and "contains all its limit points". The modern general definition calls a topological space compact if e, or to the space of all bounded continuous functions X → K, where X is any topological spaceTopological spaces are structures that allow one to formalize concepts such as convergence, connectedness and continuity. They appear in virtually every branch of modern mathematics and are a central unifying notion. The branch of mathematics that studies, or indeed to the space B(X) of all bounded functions X → K, where X is any setThis article is about sets in mathematics. For other meanings, see Set (disambiguation). Sets are one of the most important and fundamental concepts in modern mathematics. Basic set theory, having only been invented at the end of the 19th century, is now. In all these examples, we can multiply functions and stay in the same space: all these examples are in fact unitary Banach algebrasIn functional analysis, a Banach algebra named after Stefan Banach, is an associative algebra A over the real or complex numbers which at the same time is also a Banach space. The algebra multiplication and the Banach space norm are required to be related.
If p ≥ 1 is a real number, we can consider the space of all infinite sequenceThis is a page about mathematics. For other usages of "sequence", see: sequence (non-mathematical). In mathematics, a sequence is a list of objects (or events) which have been ordered in a sequential fashion; such that each member either comes before, ors (x1, x2, x3, ...) of elements in K such that the infinite series ∑ |xi|p converges. The p-th root of this series' value is then defined to be the p-norm of the sequence. The space, together with this norm, is a Banach space; it is denoted by l p.
The Banach space l∞ consists of all bounded sequences of elements in K; the norm of such a sequence is defined to be the supremum of the absolute values of the sequence's members.
Again, if p ≥ 1 is a real number, we can consider all functions f : [a, b] → K such that |f|p is Lebesgue integrable. The p-th root of this integral is then defined to be the norm of f. By itself, this space is not a Banach space because there are non-zero functions whose norm is zero. We define an equivalence relation as follows: f and g are equivalent if and only if the norm of f - g is zero. The set of equivalence classes then forms a Banach space; it is denoted by L p[a, b]. It is crucial to use the Lebesgue integral and not the Riemann integral here, because the Riemann integral would not yield a complete space. These examples can be generalized; see L p spaces for details.
If X and Y are two Banach spaces, then we can form their direct sum X ⊕ Y, which is again a Banach space. This construction can be generalized to the direct sum of arbitrarily many Banach spaces.
If M is a closed subspace of the Banach space X, then the quotient space X/M is again a Banach space.
Finally, every Hilbert space is a Banach space. The converse is not true.