theory of functions of a real variable - s. sternberg

Theory of functions of a real variable.
Shlomo Sternberg
May 10, 2005
2
Introduction.
I have taught the beginning graduate course in real variables and functional
analysis three times in the last five years, and this book is the result. The
course assumes that the student has seen the basics of real variable theory and
point set topology. The elements of the topology of metrics spaces are presented
(in the nature of a rapid review) in Chapter I.
The course itself consists of two parts: 1) measure theory and integration,
and 2) Hilbert space theory, especially the spectral theorem and its applications.
In Chapter II I do the basics of Hilbert space theory, i.e. what I can do
without measure theory or the Lebesgue integral. The hero here (and perhaps
for the first half of the course) is the Riesz representation theorem. Included
is the spectral theorem for compact self-adjoint operators and applications of
this theorem to elliptic partial differential equations. The pde material follows
closely the treatment by Bers and Schecter in Partial Differential Equations by
Bers, John and Schecter AMS (1964)
Chapter III is a rapid presentation of the basics about the Fourier transform.
Chapter IV is concerned with measure theory. The first part follows Caratheodory’s
classical presentation. The second part dealing with Hausdorff measure and di-
mension, Hutchinson’s theorem and fractals is taken in large part from the b ook
by Edgar, Measure theory, Topology, and Fractal Geometry Springer (1991).
This book contains many more details and beautiful examples and pictures.
Chapter V is a standard treatment of the Lebesgue integral.
Chapters VI, and VIII deal with abstract measure theory and integration.
These chapters basically follow the treatment by Lo om is in his Abstract Har-
monic Analysis.
Chapter VII develops the theory of Wiener measure and Brownian motion
following a classical paper by Ed Nelson published in the Journal of Mathemat-

ical Physics in 1964. Then we study the idea of a generalized random proc ess
as introduced by Gelfand and Vilenkin, but from a point of view taught to us
by Dan Stroock.
The rest of the book is devoted to the spectral theorem. We present three
proofs of this theorem. The first, which is currently the most popular, derives
the theorem from the Gelfand representation theorem for Banach algebras. This
is presented in Chapter IX (for bounded operators). In this chapter we again
follow Loomis rather closely.
In Chapter X we extend the proof to unbounded operators, following Loomis
and Reed and Simon Methods of Modern Mathematical Physics. Then we give
Lorch’s pro of of the spectral theorem from his book Spectral Theory. This has
the flavor of complex analysis. The third proof due to Davies, presented at the
end of Chapter XII replaces complex analysis by almost complex analysis.
The remaining chapters can be considered as giving more specialized in-
formation about the spectral theorem and its applications. Chapter XI is de-
voted to one parameter semi-groups, and especially to Stone’s theorem about
the infinitesimal generator of one parameter groups of unitary transformations.
Chapter XII discusses some theorems which are of importance in applications of
3
the spectral theorem to quantum mechanics and quantum chemistry. Chapter
XIII is a brief introduction to the Lax-Phillips theory of scattering.
4
Contents
1 The topol ogy of metric spaces 13
1.1 Metric spaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
1.2 Completeness and completion. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
1.3 Normed vector spaces and Banach spaces. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
1.4 Compactness. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
1.5 Total Boundedness. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
1.6 Separability. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

1.7 Second Countability. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
1.8 Conclusion of the proof of Theorem 1.5.1. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
1.9 Dini’s lemma. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
1.10 The Lebesgue outer measure of an interval is its length. . . . . . 21
1.11 Zorn’s lemma and the axiom of choice. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
1.12 The Baire category theorem. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
1.13 Tychonoff’s theorem. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
1.14 Urysohn’s lemma. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
1.15 The Stone-Weierstrass theorem. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
1.16 Machado’s theorem. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
1.17 The Hahn-Banach theorem. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
1.18 The Uniform Boundedness Principle. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
2 Hilbert Spaces and Compact operators. 37
2.1 Hilbert space. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
2.1.1 Scalar products. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
2.1.2 The Cauchy-Schwartz inequality. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
2.1.3 The triangle inequality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
2.1.4 Hilbert and pre-Hilbert spaces. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
2.1.5 The Pythagorean theorem. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
2.1.6 The theorem of Apollonius. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
2.1.7 The theorem of Jordan and von Neumann. . . . . . . . . 42
2.1.8 Orthogonal projection. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
2.1.9 The Riesz representation theorem. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
2.1.10 What is L
2
(T)? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
2.1.11 Projection onto a direct sum. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
2.1.12 Projection onto a finite dimensional subspace. . . . . . . . 49
5
6 CONTENTS

2.1.13 Bessel’s inequality. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
2.1.14 Parseval’s equation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
2.1.15 Orthonormal bases. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
2.2 Self-adjoint transformations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
2.2.1 Non-negative self-adjoint transformations. . . . . . . . . . 52
2.3 Compact self-adjoint transformations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
2.4 Fourier’s Fourier series. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
2.4.1 Proof by integration by parts. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
2.4.2 Relation to the operator
d
dx
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
2.4.3 G˚arding’s inequality, special case. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
2.5 The Heisenberg uncertainty principle. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
2.6 The Sobolev Spaces. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
2.7 G˚arding’s inequality. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
2.8 Consequences of G˚arding’s inequality. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
2.9 Extension of the basic lemmas to m anifolds. . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
2.10 Example: Hodge theory. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
2.11 The resolvent. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
3 The Fourier Transform. 85
3.1 Conventions, especially about 2π. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
3.2 Convolution goes to multiplication. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
3.3 Scaling. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
3.4 Fourier transform of a Gaussian is a Gaussian. . . . . . . . . . . 86
3.5 The multiplication formula. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
3.6 The inversion formula. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
3.7 Plancherel’s theorem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
3.8 The Poisson summation formula. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
3.9 The Shannon sampling theorem. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90

3.10 The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
3.11 Tempered distributions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
3.11.1 Examples of Fourier transforms of elements of S

. . . . . . 93
4 Measure theory. 95
4.1 Lebesgue outer measure. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
4.2 Lebesgue inner measure. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
4.3 Lebesgue’s definition of measurability. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
4.4 Caratheodory’s definition of measurability. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
4.5 Countable additivity. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
4.6 σ-fields, measures, and outer measures. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
4.7 Constructing outer measures, Method I. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
4.7.1 A pathological example. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
4.7.2 Metric outer measures. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
4.8 Constructing outer measures, Method II. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
4.8.1 An example. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114
4.9 Hausdorff measure. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116
4.10 Hausdorff dimension. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
CONTENTS 7
4.11 Push forward. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
4.12 The Hausdorff dimension of fractals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
4.12.1 Similarity dimension. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
4.12.2 The string model. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122
4.13 The Hausdorff metric and Hutchinson’s theorem. . . . . . . . . . 124
4.14 Affine examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
4.14.1 The classical Cantor set. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
4.14.2 The Sierpinski Gasket . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128
4.14.3 Moran’s theorem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
5 The Lebesgue integral. 133

5.1 Real valued measurable functions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134
5.2 The integral of a non-negative function. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134
5.3 Fatou’s lemma. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138
5.4 The monotone convergence theorem. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140
5.5 The space L
1
(X, R). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140
5.6 The dominated convergence theorem. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143
5.7 Riemann integrability. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144
5.8 The Beppo - Levi theorem. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145
5.9 L
1
is complete. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146
5.10 Dense subsets of L
1
(R, R). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
5.11 The Riemann-Lebesgue Lemma. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148
5.11.1 The Cantor-Lebes gue theorem. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150
5.12 Fubini’s theorem. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
5.12.1 Product σ-fields. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
5.12.2 π-system s and λ-systems. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152
5.12.3 The monotone class theorem. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
5.12.4 Fubini for finite measures and bounded functions. . . . . 154
5.12.5 Extensions to unbounded functions and to σ-finite measures.156
6 The Daniell integral. 157
6.1 The Daniell Integral . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157
6.2 Monotone class theorems. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160
6.3 Measure. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
6.4 H¨older, Minkowski , L
p

and L
q
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
6.5  · 
∞
is the essential sup norm. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166
6.6 The Radon-Nikodym Theorem. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167
6.7 The dual space of L
p
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170
6.7.1 The variations of a bounded functional. . . . . . . . . . . 171
6.7.2 Duality of L
p
and L
q
when µ(S) < ∞. . . . . . . . . . . . 172
6.7.3 The case where µ(S) = ∞. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
6.8 Integration on locally compact Hausdorff spaces. . . . . . . . . . 175
6.8.1 Riesz representation theorems. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175
6.8.2 Fubini’s theorem. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176
6.9 The Riesz representation theorem redux. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177
6.9.1 Statement of the theorem. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177
8 CONTENTS
6.9.2 Prop os itions in topology. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178
6.9.3 Proof of the uniqueness of the µ restricted to B(X). . . . 180
6.10 Existence. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180
6.10.1 Definition. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180
6.10.2 Measurability of the Borel sets. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182
6.10.3 Compact sets have finite measure. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183
6.10.4 Interior regularity. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183

6.10.5 Conclusion of the pro of. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184
7 Wiener measure, Brownian motion and white noise. 187
7.1 Wiener measure. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187
7.1.1 The Big Path Space. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187
7.1.2 The heat equation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189
7.1.3 Paths are continuous with probability one. . . . . . . . . 190
7.1.4 Embedding in S

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194
7.2 Stochastic processes and generalized stochastic processes. . . . . 195
7.3 Gaussian measures. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196
7.3.1 Generalities about expectation and variance. . . . . . . . 196
7.3.2 Gaussian measures and their variances. . . . . . . . . . . 198
7.3.3 The variance of a Gaussian with density. . . . . . . . . . . 199
7.3.4 The variance of Brownian motion. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200
7.4 The derivative of Brownian motion is white noise. . . . . . . . . . 202
8 Haar measure. 205
8.1 Examples. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206
8.1.1 R
n
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206
8.1.2 Discrete groups. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206
8.1.3 Lie groups. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206
8.2 Topological facts. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211
8.3 Construction of the Haar integral. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212
8.4 Uniqueness. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 216
8.5 µ(G) < ∞ if and only if G is compact. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 218
8.6 The group algebra. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 218
8.7 The involution. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220
8.7.1 The modular function. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220

8.7.2 Definition of the involution. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 222
8.7.3 Relation to convolution. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223
8.7.4 Banach algebras with involutions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223
8.8 The algebra of finite measures. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223
8.8.1 Algebras and coalgebras. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 224
8.9 Invariant and relatively invariant measures on homogeneous spaces.225
CONTENTS 9
9 Banach algebras and the spectral theorem. 231
9.1 Maximal ideals. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 232
9.1.1 Existence. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 232
9.1.2 The maximal spectrum of a ring. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 232
9.1.3 Maximal ideals in a commutative algebra. . . . . . . . . . 233
9.1.4 Maximal ideals in the ring of continuous functions. . . . . 234
9.2 Normed algebras. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235
9.3 The Gelfand representation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 236
9.3.1 Invertible elements in a Banach algebra form an open set. 238
9.3.2 The Gelfand representation for commutative Banach al-
gebras. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241
9.3.3 The spectral radius. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241
9.3.4 The generalized Wiener theorem. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 242
9.4 Self-adjoint algebras. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 244
9.4.1 An important generalization. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247
9.4.2 An important application. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 248
9.5 The Spectral Theorem for Bounded Normal Operators, Func-
tional Calculus Form. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249
9.5.1 Statement of the theorem. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 250
9.5.2 Spec
B
(T ) = Spec
A

(T ). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251
9.5.3 A direct proof of the spectral theorem. . . . . . . . . . . . 253
10 The spectral theorem. 255
10.1 Resolutions of the identity. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 256
10.2 The spectral theorem for bounded normal operators. . . . . . . . 261
10.3 Stone’s formula. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261
10.4 Unbounded operators. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 262
10.5 Operators and their domains. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 263
10.6 The adjoint. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 264
10.7 Self-adjoint operators. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265
10.8 The resolvent. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 266
10.9 The multiplication operator form of the spectral theorem. . . . . 268
10.9.1 Cyclic vectors. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 269
10.9.2 The general case. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 271
10.9.3 The spectral theorem for unbounded self-adjoint opera-
tors, multiplication operator form. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 271
10.9.4 The functional calculus. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273
10.9.5 Resolutions of the identity. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 274
10.10The Riesz-Dunford calculus. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 276
10.11Lorch’s proof of the spectral theorem. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 279
10.11.1 Positive operators. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 279
10.11.2 The point spectrum. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 281
10.11.3 Partition into pure types. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 282
10.11.4 Completion of the proof. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 283
10.12Characterizing operators with purely continuous spectrum. . . . 287
10.13Appendix. The closed graph theorem. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 288
10 CONTENTS
11 Stone’s theorem 291
11.1 von Neumann’s Cayley transform. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 292
11.1.1 An elementary example. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 297

11.2 Equibounded semi-groups on a Frechet space. . . . . . . . . . . . 299
11.2.1 The infinitesimal generator. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 299
11.3 The differential equation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 301
11.3.1 The resolvent. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 303
11.3.2 Examples. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 304
11.4 The power series expansion of the exponential. . . . . . . . . . . 309
11.5 The Hille Yosida theorem. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 310
11.6 Contraction semigroups. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 313
11.6.1 Dissipation and contraction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 314
11.6.2 A special case : exp(t(B − I)) with B ≤ 1. . . . . . . . . 316
11.7 Convergence of semigroups. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 317
11.8 The Trotter product formula. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 320
11.8.1 Lie’s formula. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 320
11.8.2 Chernoff’s theorem. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 321
11.8.3 The product formula. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 322
11.8.4 Commutators. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 323
11.8.5 The Kato-Rellich theorem. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 323
11.8.6 Feynman path integrals. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 324
11.9 The Feynman-Kac formula. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 326
11.10The free Hamiltonian and the Yukawa potential. . . . . . . . . . 328
11.10.1 The Yukawa potential and the resolvent. . . . . . . . . . . 329
11.10.2 The time evolution of the free Hamiltonian. . . . . . . . . 331
12 More about the spectral theorem 333
12.1 Bound states and scattering states. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 333
12.1.1 Schwartzschild’s theorem. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 333
12.1.2 The mean ergodic theorem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 335
12.1.3 General considerations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 336
12.1.4 Using the mean ergodic theorem. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 339
12.1.5 The Amrein-Georgescu theorem. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 340
12.1.6 Kato potentials. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 341

12.1.7 Applying the Kato-Rellich method. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 343
12.1.8 Using the inequality (12.7). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 344
12.1.9 Ruelle’s theorem. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 345
12.2 Non-negative operators and quadratic forms. . . . . . . . . . . . 345
12.2.1 Fractional powers of a non-negative self-adjoint operator. 345
12.2.2 Quadratic forms. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 346
12.2.3 Lower semi-continuous functions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 347
12.2.4 The main theorem about quadratic forms. . . . . . . . . . 348
12.2.5 Extensions and cores. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 350
12.2.6 The Friedrichs extension. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 350
12.3 Dirichlet boundary conditions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 351
12.3.1 The Sobolev spaces W
1,2
(Ω) and W
1,2
0
(Ω). . . . . . . . . 352
CONTENTS 11
12.3.2 Generalizing the domain and the coefficients. . . . . . . . 354
12.3.3 A Sobolev version of Rademacher’s theorem. . . . . . . . 355
12.4 Rayleigh-Ritz and its applications. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 357
12.4.1 The discrete spec trum and the essential spectrum. . . . . 357
12.4.2 Characterizing the discrete spectrum. . . . . . . . . . . . 357
12.4.3 Characterizing the essential spectrum . . . . . . . . . . . 358
12.4.4 Operators with empty essential spectrum. . . . . . . . . . 358
12.4.5 A characterization of compact operators. . . . . . . . . . 360
12.4.6 The variational method. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 360
12.4.7 Variations on the variational formula. . . . . . . . . . . . 362
12.4.8 The secular equation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 364
12.5 The Dirichlet problem for bounded domains. . . . . . . . . . . . 365

12.6 Valence. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 366
12.6.1 Two dimensional examples. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 367
12.6.2 H¨uckel theory of hydrocarbons. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 368
12.7 Davies’s proof of the spectral theorem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 368
12.7.1 Symbols. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 368
12.7.2 Slowly decreasing functions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 369
12.7.3 Stokes’ formula in the plane. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 370
12.7.4 Almost holomorphic extensions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 371
12.7.5 The Heffler-Sj¨ostrand formula. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 371
12.7.6 A formula for the resolvent. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 373
12.7.7 The functional calculus. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 374
12.7.8 Resolvent invariant subspaces. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 376
12.7.9 Cyclic subspaces. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 377
12.7.10 The spectral representation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 380
13 Scattering theory. 383
13.1 Examples. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 383
13.1.1 Translation - truncation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 383
13.1.2 Incoming representations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 384
13.1.3 Scattering residue. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 386
13.2 Breit-Wigner. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 387
13.3 The representation theorem for strongly contractive semi-groups. 388
13.4 The Sinai representation theorem. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 390
13.5 The Stone - von Neumann theorem. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 392
12 CONTENTS
Chapter 1
The topology of metric
spaces
1.1 Metric spaces
A metric for a set X is a function d from X × X to the non-negative real
numbers (which we dente by R

≥0
),
d : X ×X → R
≥0
such that for all x, y, z ∈ X
1. d(x, y) = d(y, x)
2. d(x, z) ≤ d(x, y) + d(y, z)
3. d(x, x) = 0
4. If d(x, y) = 0 then x = y.
The inequality in 2) is known as the triangle i nequality since if X is the
plane and d the usual notion of distance, it says that the length of an edge of a
triangle is at most the sum of the lengths of the two other edges. (In the plane,
the inequality is strict unless the three points lie on a line.)
Condition 4) is in many ways inessential, and it is often convenient to drop
it, especially for the purposes of some proofs. For example, we might want to
consider the decimal expansions .49999 . . . and .50000 . . . as different, but as
having zero distance from one another. Or we might want to “identify” these
two decimal expansions as representing the same point.
A function d which satisfies only conditions 1) - 3) is called a pseudo-
metric.
A metric space is a pair (X, d) where X is a set and d is a me tric on X.
Almost always, when d is understood, we engage in the abuse of language and
speak of “the metric space X”.
13
14 CHAPTER 1. THE TOPOLOGY OF METRIC SPACES
Similarly for the notion of a pseudo-metric space.
In like fashion, we call d(x, y) the distance between x and y, the function
d being understoo d.
If r is a positive number and x ∈ X, the (open) ball of radius r about x is
defined to be the set of points at distance less than r from x and is denoted by

B
r
(x). In symbols,
B
r
(x) := {y| d(x, y) < r}.
If r and s are positive real numbers and if x and z are points of a pseudo-
metric space X, it is possible that B
r
(x) ∩ B
s
(z) = ∅. This will certainly be
the case if d(x, z) > r + s by virtue of the triangle inequality. Suppose that this
intersection is not empty and that
w ∈ B
r
(x) ∩ B
s
(z).
If y ∈ X is such that d(y, w) < min[r − d(x, w), s − d(z, w)] then the triangle
inequality implies that y ∈ B
r
(x) ∩ B
s
(z). Put another way, if we set t :=
min[r −d(x, w), s −d(z, w)] then
B
t
(w) ⊂ B
r

(x) ∩ B
s
(z).
Put still another way, this says that the intersection of two (open) balls is either
empty or is a union of open balls. So if we call a set in X open if either it
is empty, or is a union of open balls, we conclude that the intersection of any
finite number of ope n sets is open, as is the union of any number of open sets.
In technical language, we say that the open balls form a base for a topology
on X.
A map f : X → Y from one pseudo-metric space to another is called con-
tinuous if the inverse image under f of any open set in Y is an open set in
X. Since an open set is a union of balls, this amounts to the condition that
the inverse image of an open ball in Y is a union of open balls in X, or, to use
the familiar , δ language, that if f(x) = y then for every  > 0 there exists a
δ = δ(x, ) > 0 such that
f(B
δ
(x)) ⊂ B

(y).
Notice that in this definition δ is allowed to depend both on x and on . The
map is called uniformly continuous if we can choose the δ independently of
x.
An even stronger condition on a map from one pseudo-metric space to an-
other is the Lipschitz condition. A map f : X → Y from a pseudo-metric
space (X, d
X
) to a pseudo-metric space (Y, d
Y
) is called a Lipschitz map with

Lipschitz constant C if
d
Y
(f(x
1
), f(x
2
)) ≤ Cd
X
(x
1
, x
2
) ∀x
1
, x
2
∈ X.
Clearly a Lipschitz map is uniformly continuous.
For example, suppose that A is a fixed subset of a pseudo-metric space X.
Define the function d(A, ·) from X to R by
d(A, x) := inf{d(x, w), w ∈ A}.
1.1. METRIC SPACES 15
The triangle inequality says that
d(x, w) ≤ d(x, y) + d(y, w)
for all w, in particular for w ∈ A, and hence taking lower bounds we c onclude
that
d(A, x) ≤ d(x, y) + d(A, y).
or
d(A, x) − d(A, y) ≤ d(x, y).

Reversing the roles of x and y then gives
|d(A, x) − d(A, y)| ≤ d(x, y).
Using the standard metric on the real numbers where the distance between a
and b is |a − b| this last inequality says that d(A, ·) is a Lipschitz map from X
to R with C = 1.
A closed set is defined to be a set whose complement is open. Since the
inverse image of the complement of a set (under a map f) is the complement
of the inverse image, we conclude that the inverse image of a closed set under a
continuous map is again closed.
For example, the set consisting of a s ingle point in R is closed. Since the
map d(A, ·) is continuous, we conclude that the set
{x|d(A, x) = 0}
consisting of all points at zero distance from A is a closed set. It clearly is a
closed set which contains A. Suppose that S is some closed set containing A, and
y ∈ S. Then there is some r > 0 such that B
r
(y) is contained in the complement
of S, which implies that d(y, w) ≥ r for all w ∈ S. Thus {x|d(A, x) = 0} ⊂ S.
In short {x|d(A, x) = 0} is a closed set containing A which is contained in all
closed sets containing A. This is the definition of the closure of a set, which is
denoted by A. We have proved that
A = {x|d(A, x) = 0}.
In particular, the closure of the one point set {x} consists of all points u such
that d(u, x) = 0.
Now the relation d(x, y) = 0 is an equivalence relation, call it R. (Transitiv-
ity being a consequence of the triangle inequality.) This then divides the space
X into equivalence classes, where each equivalence class is of the form {x}, the
closure of a one point set. If u ∈ {x} and v ∈ {y} then
d(u, v) ≤ d(u, x) + d(x, y) + d(y, v) = d(x, y).
since x ∈ {u} and y ∈ {v} we obtain the reverse inequality, and so

d(u, v) = d(x, y).
16 CHAPTER 1. THE TOPOLOGY OF METRIC SPACES
In other words, we may define the distance function on the quotient space X/R,
i.e. on the space of equivalence classes by
d({x}, {y}) := d(u, v), u ∈ {x}, v ∈ {y}
and this does not depend on the choice of u and v. Axioms 1)-3) for a metric
space continue to hold, but now
d({x}, {y}) = 0 ⇒ {x} = {y}.
In other words, X/R is a metric space. Clearly the projection map x → {x} is
an isometry of X onto X/R. (An isometry is a map which preserves distances.)
In particular it is continuous. It is also open.
In short, we have provided a canonical way of passing (via an isometry) from
a pseudo-metric space to a metric space by identifying points which are at zero
distance from one another.
A subset A of a pseudo-metric space X is called dense if its closure is the
whole space. From the above construction, the image A/R of A in the quotient
space X/R is again dense. We will use this fact in the next section in the
following form:
If f : Y → X is an isometry of Y such that f (Y ) is a dense set of X, then
f descends to a map F of Y onto a dense set in the metric space X/R.
1.2 Completeness and completion.
The usual notion of convergence and Cauchy sequence go over unchanged to
metric spaces or pseudo-metric spaces Y . A sequence {y
n
} is said to converge
to the point y if for every  > 0 there exists an N = N () such that
d(y
n
, y) <  ∀ n > N.
A sequence {y

n
} is said to be Cauchy if for any  > 0 there exists an N = N()
such that
d(y
n
, y
m
) <  ∀ m, n > N.
The triangle inequality implies that every convergent sequence is Cauchy. But
not every Cauchy sequence is convergent. For example, we can have a sequence
of rational numbers which converge to an irrational number, as in the approxi-
mation to the square root of 2. So if we look at the set of rational numbers as a
metric space Q in its own right, not every Cauchy sequence of rational numbers
converges in Q. We must “complete” the rational numbers to obtain R, the set
of real numbers. We want to discuss this phenomenon in general.
So we say that a (pseudo-)metric space is complete if every Cauchy sequence
converges. The key result of this section is that we can always “complete” a
metric or pseudo-metric space. More precisely, we claim that
1.3. NORMED VECTOR SPACES AND BANACH SPACES. 17
Any metric (or pseudo-metric) space can be mapped by a one to one isometry
onto a dense subset of a complete metric (or pseudo-metric) space.
By the italicized statement of the preceding section, it is enough to prove
this for a pseudo-metric spaces X. Let X
seq
denote the set of Cauchy sequences
in X, and define the distance between the Cauchy sequences {x
n
} and {y
n
} to

be
d({x
n
}, {y
n
}) := lim
n→∞
d(x
n
, y
n
).
It is easy to check that d defines a pseudo-metric on X
seq
. Let f : X → X
seq
be the map sending x to the sequence all of whose elements are x;
f(x) = (x, x, x, x, ···).
It is clear that f is one to one and is an isometry. The image is dense since by
definition
lim d(f(x
n
), {x
n
}) = 0.
Now since f (X) is dense in X
seq
, it suffices to show that any Cauchy sequence
of points of the form f(x
n

) converges to a limit. But such a sequence converges
to the element {x
n
}. QED
1.3 Normed vector spaces and Banach spaces.
Of special interest are vector spaces which have a metric which is compatible
with the vector space properties and which is complete: Let V be a vector space
over the real or complex numbers. A norm is a real valued function
v → v
on V which satisfies
1. v ≥ 0 and > 0 if v = 0,
2. cv = |c|v for any real (or complex) number c, and
3. v + w ≤ v + w ∀ v, w ∈ V .
Then d(v, w) := v−w is a metric on V , which satisfies d(v+u, w+u) = d(v, w)
for all v, w, u ∈ V . The ball of radius r about the origin is then the set of all v
such that v < r. A vector space equipped with a norm is called a normed
vector space and if it is complete relative to the metric it is called a Banach
space.
Our construction shows that any vector space with a norm can be completed
so that it becomes a Banach space.
18 CHAPTER 1. THE TOPOLOGY OF METRIC SPACES
1.4 Compactness.
A topological space X is said to be compact if it has one (and hence the other)
of the following equivalent properties:
• Every open cover has a finite subcover. In more detail: if {U
α
} is a
collection of open sets with
X ⊂


α
U
α
then there are finitely many α
1
, . , α
n
such that
X ⊂ U
α
1
∪ ··· ∪ U
α
n
.
• If F is a family of closed sets such that

F ∈F
= ∅
then a finite intersection of the F ’s are empty:
F
1
∩ ··· ∩ F
n
= ∅.
1.5 Total Boundedness.
A metric space X is said to be totally bounded if for every  > 0 there are
finitely many open balls of radius  which cover X.
Theorem 1.5.1 The following assertions are equivalent for a metric space:
1. X is compact.

2. Every sequence in X has a convergent subsequence.
3. X is totally bounded and complete.
Proof that 1. ⇒ 2. Let {y
i
} be a sequence of points in X. We first show that
there is a point x with the property for every  > 0, the open ball of radius 
centered at x contains the points y
i
for infinitely many i. Suppose not. Then
for any z ∈ X there is an  > 0 such that the ball B

(z) contains only finitely
many y
i
. Since z ∈ B

(z), the set of such balls covers X. By compactness,
finitely many of these balls cover X, and hence there are only finitely many i,
a contradiction.
Now cho os e i
1
so that y
i
1
is in the ball of radius
1
2
centered at x. Then
choose i
2

> i
1
so that y
i
2
is in the ball of radius
1
4
centered at x and kee p going.
We have constructed a subsequence so that the points y
i
k
converge to x. Thus
we have proved that 1. implies 2.
1.6. SEPARABILITY. 19
Proof that 2. ⇒ 3. If {x
j
} is a Cauchy sequence in X, it has a convergent
subsequence by hypothesis, and the limit of this subsequence is (by the triangle
inequality) the limit of the original sequence. Hence X is complete. We must
show that it is totally bounded. Given  > 0, pick a point y
1
∈ X and let B

(y
1
)
be open ball of radius  about y
1
. If B


(y
1
) = X there is nothing further to
prove. If not, pick a point y
2
∈ X −B

(y
1
) and let B

(y
2
) be the ball of radius 
about y
2
. If B

(y
1
) ∪B

(y
2
) = X there is nothing to prove. If not, pick a point
y
3
∈ X − (B


(y
1
) ∪ B

(y
2
)) etc. This procedure can not continue indefinitely,
for then we will have constructed a sequence of points which are all at a mutual
distance ≥  from one another, and this sequence has no Cauchy subsequence.
Proof that 3. ⇒ 2. Let {x
j
} be a sequence of points in X which we relabel as
{x
1,j
}. Let B
1,
1
2
, . , B
n
1
,
1
2
be a finite number of balls of radius
1
2
which cover X.
Our hypothesis 3. asserts that such a finite cover exists. Infinitely many of the j
must be such that the x

1,j
all lie in one of these balls. Relabel this subsequence
as {x
2,j
}. Cover X by finitely many balls of radius
1
3
. There must b e infinitely
many j such that all the x
2,j
lie in one of the balls. Relabel this subsequence as
{x
3,j
}. Continue. At the ith stage we have a subsequence {x
i,j
} of our original
sequence (in fact of the preceding subsequence in the construction) all of whose
points lie in a ball of radius 1/i. Now consider the “diagonal” subsequence
x
1,1
, x
2,2
, x
3,3
, . .
All the points from x
i,i
on lie in a fixed ball of radius 1/i so this is a Cauchy
sequence. Since X is assumed to be complete, this subsequence of our original
sequence is convergent.

We have shown that 2. and 3. are equivalent. The hard part of the proof
consists in showing that these two conditions imply 1. For this it is useful to
introduce some terminology:
1.6 Separability.
A metric space X is called separable if it has a countable subset {x
j
} of points
which are dense. For example R is separable because the rationals are countable
and dense. Similarly, R
n
is separable because the points all of whose coordinates
are rational form a countable dense subset.
Proposition 1.6.1 Any subset Y of a separable metric space X is separable
(in the induced metric).
Proof. Let {x
j
} be a countable dense sequence in X. Consider the set of pairs
(j, n) such that
B
1/2n
(x
j
) ∩ Y = ∅.
For each such (j, n) let y
j,n
be any point in this non-empty intersection. We
claim that the countable set of points y
j,n
are dense in Y . Indeed, let y be any
point of Y . Let n be any positive integer. We can find a point x

j
such that
d(x
j
, y) < 1/2n since the x
j
are dense in X. But then d(y, y
j,n
) < 1/n by the
triangle inequality. QED
20 CHAPTER 1. THE TOPOLOGY OF METRIC SPACES
Proposition 1.6.2 Any totally bounded metric space X is separable.
Proof. For each n let {x
1,n
, . , x
i
n
,n
} be the centers of balls of radius 1/n
(finite in number) which cover X. Put all of these together into one sequence
which is clearly dense. QED
A base for the open sets in a topology on a space X is a collection B of open
set such that every open set of X is the union of sets of B
Proposition 1.6.3 A family B is a base for the topology on X if and only if
for every x ∈ X and every open set U containing x there is a V ∈ B such that
x ∈ V and V ⊂ U.
Proof. If B is a base, then U is a union of members of B one of which must
therefore contain x. Conversely, let U be an open subset of X. For each x ∈ U
there is a V
x

⊂ U belonging to B. The union of these over all x ∈ U is contained
in U and contains all the points of U, hence equals U. So B is a base. QED
1.7 Second Countability.
A topological space X is said to be second countable or to satisfy the second
axiom of countability if it has a base B which is (finite or ) countable.
Proposition 1.7.1 A metric space X is second countable if and only if it is
separable.
Proof. Suppose X is separable with a countable dense set {x
i
}. The open balls
of radius 1/n about the x
i
form a countable base: Indeed, if U is an open set
and x ∈ U then take n sufficiently large so that B
2/n
(x) ⊂ U . Choose j so that
d(x
j
, x) < 1/n. Then V := B
1/n
(x
j
) satisfies x ∈ V ⊂ U so by Proposition
1.6.3 the set of balls B
1/n
(x
j
) form a base and they constitute a countable set.
Conversely, let B be a countable base, and choose a point x
j

∈ U
j
for each
U
j
∈ B. If x is any point of X, the ball of radius  > 0 about x includes some
U
j
and hence contains x
j
. So the x
j
form a countable dense set. QED
Proposition 1.7.2 Lindelof’s theorem. Suppose that the topological space
X is second countable. Then every open cover has a countable subcover.
Let U be a cover, not necessarily countable, and let B be a countable base. Let
C ⊂ B consist of those open sets V belonging to B which are such that V ⊂ U
where U ∈ U. By Proposition 1.6.3 these form a (countable) cover. For each
V ∈ C choose a U
V
∈ U such that V ⊂ U
V
. Then the {U
V
}
V ∈C
form a countable
subset of U which is a cover. QED
1.8 Conclusion of the proof of Theorem 1.5.1.
Supp ose that condition 2. and 3. of the theorem hold for the metric space

X. By Proposition 1.6.2, X is separable, and hence by Proposition 1.7.1, X is
1.9. DINI’S LEMMA. 21
second countable. Hence by Proposition 1.7.2, every cover U has a countable
subcover. So we must prove that if U
1
, U
2
, U
3
, . . . is a sequence of open sets
which cover X, then X = U
1
∪U
2
∪···∪U
m
for some finite integer m. Suppose
not. For each m choose x
m
∈ X with x
m
∈ U
1
∪ ··· ∪ U
m
. By condition 2.
of Theorem 1.5.1, we may choose a subsequence of the {x
j
} which converge to
some point x. Since U

1
∪ ··· ∪U
m
is open, its complement is c losed, and since
x
j
∈ U
1
∪ ··· ∪ U
m
for j > m we conclude that x ∈ U
1
∪ ··· ∪ U
m
for any m.
This says that the {U
j
} do not cover X, a contradiction. QED
Putting the pieces together, we see that a clos ed bounded subset of R
m
is
compact. This is the famous Heine-Borel theorem. So Theorem 1.5.1 can be
considered as a far reaching generalization of the Heine-Borel theorem.
1.9 Dini’s lemma.
Let X be a metric space and let L denote the space of real valued continuous
functions of compact support. So f ∈ L means that f is continuous, and the
closure of the set of all x for which |f(x)| > 0 is compact. Thus L is a real
vector space, and f ∈ L ⇒ |f| ∈ L. Thus if f ∈ L and g ∈ L then f + g ∈ L and
also max (f, g) =
1

2
(f + g + |f −g|) ∈ L and min (f, g) =
1
2
(f + g −|f −g|) ∈ L.
For a sequence of elements in L (or more generally in any space of real valued
functions) we write f
n
↓ 0 to mean that the sequence of functions is monotone
decreasing, and at each x we have f
n
(x) → 0.
Theorem 1.9.1 Dini’s lemma. If f
n
∈ L and f
n
↓ 0 then f
n

∞
→ 0. In
other words, monotone decreasing convergence to 0 implies uniform convergence
to zero for elements of L.
Proof. Given  > 0, let C
n
= {x|f
n
(x) ≥ }. Then the C
n
are compact,

C
n
⊃ C
n+1
and

k
C
k
= ∅. Hence a finite intersection is already empty, which
means that C
n
= ∅ for some n. This means that f
n

∞
≤  for some n, and
hence, since the sequence is monotone decreasing, for all subsequent n. QED
1.10 The Lebesgue outer measure of an interval
is its length.
For any subset A ⊂ R we define its Lebesgue outer measure by
m
∗
(A) := inf

(I
n
) : I
n
are intervals with A ⊂


I
n
. (1.1)
Here the le ngth (I) of any interval I = [a, b] is b − a with the same definition
for half open intervals (a, b] or [a, b), or open intervals. Of course if a = −∞
and b is finite or +∞, or if a is finite and b = +∞ the length is infinite. So the
infimum in (1.1) is taken over all covers of A by intervals. By the usual /2
n
trick, i.e. by replacing each I
j
= [a
j
, b
j
] by (a
j
− /2
j+1
, b
j
+ /2
j+1
) we may
22 CHAPTER 1. THE TOPOLOGY OF METRIC SPACES
assume that the infimum is taken over open intervals. (Equally well, we could
use half open intervals of the form [a, b), for example.).
It is clear that if A ⊂ B then m
∗
(A) ≤ m

∗
(B) since any cover of B by
intervals is a cover of A. Also, if Z is any set of measure zero, then m
∗
(A∪Z) =
m
∗
(A). In particular, m
∗
(Z) = 0 if Z has measure zero. Also, if A = [a, b] is an
interval, then we can cover it by itself, so
m
∗
([a, b]) ≤ b − a,
and hence the same is true for (a, b], [a, b), or (a, b). If the interval is infinite, it
clearly can not be covered by a set of intervals whose total length is finite, since
if we lined them up with end points touching they could not cover an infinite
interval. We still must prove that
m
∗
(I) = (I) (1.2)
if I is a finite interval. We may assume that I = [c, d] is a closed interval by
what we have already said, and that the minimization in (1.1) is with respect
to a cover by op en intervals. So what we must show is that if
[c, d] ⊂

i
(a
i
, b

i
)
then
d − c ≤

i
(b
i
− a
i
).
We first apply Heine-Borel to replace the countable cover by a finite cover.
(This only decreases the right hand side of preceding inequality.) So let n be
the number of elements in the cover. We want to prove that if
[c, d] ⊂
n

i=1
(a
i
, b
i
) then d −c ≤
n

i=1
(b
i
− a
i

).
We shall do this by induction on n. If n = 1 then a
1
< c and b
1
> d so clearly
b
1
− a
1
> d − c.
Supp ose that n ≥ 2 and we know the result for all covers (of all intervals
[c, d] ) with at most n − 1 intervals in the cover. If some interval (a
i
, b
i
) is
disjoint from [c, d] we may eliminate it from the cover, and then we are in the
case of n − 1 intervals. So every (a
i
, b
i
) has non-empty intersection with [c, d].
Among the the intervals (a
i
, b
i
) there will be one for which a
i
takes on the

minimum possible value. By relabeling, we may assume that this is (a
1
, b
1
).
Since c is covered, we must have a
1
< c. If b
1
> d then (a
1
, b
1
) covers [c, d] and
there is nothing further to do. So assume b
1
≤ d. We must have b
1
> c since
(a
1
, b
1
) ∩[c, d] = ∅. Since b
1
∈ [c, d], at least one of the intervals (a
i
, b
i
), i > 1

contains the point b
1
. By relabeling, we may assume that it is (a
2
, b
2
). But now
we have a cover of [c, d] by n − 1 intervals:
[c, d] ⊂ (a
1
, b
2
) ∪
n

i=3
(a
i
, b
i
).
1.11. ZORN’S LEMMA AND THE AXIOM OF CHOICE. 23
So by induction
d − c ≤ (b
2
− a
1
) +
n


i=3
(b
i
− a
i
).
But b
2
− a
1
≤ (b
2
− a
2
) + (b
1
− a
1
) since a
2
< b
1
. QED
1.11 Zorn’s lemma and the axiom of choice.
In the first few sections we repeatedly used an argument which involved “choos-
ing” this or that element of a set. That we can do so is an axiom known as
The axiom of choice. If F is a function with domain D such that F (x)
is a non-empty set for every x ∈ D, then there exists a function f with domain
D such that f(x) ∈ F(x) for every x ∈ D.
It has been proved by G¨odel that if mathematics is consistent without the

axiom of choice (a big “if”!) then mathematics remains consistent with the
axiom of choice added.
In fact, it will be convenient for us to take a slightly less intuitive axiom as
out starting point:
Zorn’s lemma. Every partially ordered set A has a maximal linearly
ordered subset. If every linearly ordered subset of A has an upper bound, then
A contains a maximum element.
The second assertion is a consequence of the first. For let B be a maximum
linearly ordered subset of A, and x an upper bound for B. Then x is a maximum
element of A, for if y  x then we could add y to B to obtain a larger linearly
ordered set. Thus there is no element in A which is strictly larger than x which
is what we mean when we say that x is a maximum element.
Zorn’s lemma implies the axiom of choice.
Indeed, consider the set A of all functions g defined on subsets of D such
that g(x) ∈ F(x). We will let dom(g) denote the domain of definition of g. The
set A is not empty, for if we pick a point x
0
∈ D and pick y
0
∈ F (x
0
), then
the function g whose domain consists of the single point x
0
and whose value
g(x
0
) = y
0
gives an element of A. Put a partial order on A by saying that

g  h if dom(g) ⊂ dom(h) and the restriction of h to dom g coincides with g.
A linearly ordered subset means that we have an increasing family of domains
X, with functions h defined consistently with resp ec t to restriction. But this
means that there is a function g defined on the union of these domains,

X
whose restriction to each X coincides with the corresponding h. This is clearly
an upper bound. So A has a maximal element f. If the domain of f were not
24 CHAPTER 1. THE TOPOLOGY OF METRIC SPACES
all of D we could add a single point x
0
not in the domain of f and y
0
∈ F (x
0
)
contradicting the maximality of f. QED
1.12 The Baire category theorem.
Theorem 1.12.1 In a complete metric space any countable intersection of dense
open sets is dense.
Proof. Let X be the space, let B be an open ball in X, and let O
1
, O
2
. be
a sequence of dense open sets. We must show that
B ∩


n

O
n

= ∅.
Since O
1
is dense, B∩O
1
= ∅, and is open. Thus B ∩O
1
contains the closure B
1
of some open ball B
1
. We may choos e B
1
(smaller if necessary) so that its radius
is < 1. Since B
1
is open and O
2
is dense, B
1
∩O
2
contains the closure B
2
of some
open ball B
2

, of radius <
1
2
, and s o on. Since X is complete, the intersection of
the decreasing sequence of closed balls we have constructed contains some point
x which belong both to B and to the intersection of all the O
i
. QED
A Baire space is defined as a topological space in which every countable
intersection of dense open sets is dense. Thus Baire’s theorem asserts that every
complete metric space is a Baire space. A set A in a topological space is called
nowhere dense if its closure contains no open set. Put another way, a set A is
nowhere dense if its complement A
c
contains an open dense set. A set S is said
to be of first category if it is a countable union of nowhere dense sets. Then
Baire’s category theorem can be reformulated as saying that the complement of
any set of first category in a complete metric space (or in any Baire space) is
dense. A property P of points of a Baire space is said to hold quasi - surely
or quasi-everywhere if it holds on an intersection of countably many dense
open sets. In other words, if the set where P does not hold is of first category.
1.13 Tychonoff’s theorem.
Let I be a set, serving as an “index set”. Suppose that for each α ∈ I we are
given a non-empty topological space S
α
. The Cartesian product
S :=

α∈I
S

α
is defined as the collection of all functions x whose domain in I and such that
x(α) ∈ S
α
. This space is not empty by the axiom of choice. We frequently write
x
α
instead of x(α) and called x
α
the “α coordinate of x”.
The map
f
α
:

α∈I
S
α
→ S
α
, x → x
α
1.14. URYSOHN’S LEMMA. 25
is called the projection of S onto S
α
. We put on S the weakest topology such
that all of these projections are continuous. So the open sets of S are generated
by the sets of the form
f
−1

α
(U
α
) where U
α
⊂ S
α
is open.
Theorem 1.13.1 [Tychonoff.] If all the S
α
are compact, then so is S =

α∈I
S
α
.
Proof. Let F be a family of closed subsets of S with the property that the
intersection of any finite collection of subsets from this family is not empty. We
must show that the intersection of all the elements of F is not empty. Using
Zorn, extend F to a maximal family F
0
of (not necessarily closed) subsets of S
with the property that the intersection of any finite collection of elements of F
0
is not empty. For each α, the projection f
α
(F
0
) has the property that there is
a point x

α
∈ S
α
which is in the closure of all the sets belonging to f
α
(F
0
). Let
x ∈ S be the point whose α-th coordinate is x
α
. We will show that x is in the
closure of every element of F
0
which will complete the proof.
Let U be an open set containing x. By the definition of the product topology,
there are finitely many α
i
and open subsets U
α
i
⊂ S
α
i
such that
x ∈
n

i=1
f
−1

α
i
(U
α
i
) ⊂ U.
So for each i = 1, . . . , n, x
α
i
∈ U
α
i
. This means that U
α
i
intersects every
set belonging to f
α
i
(F
0
). So f
−1
α
i
(U
α
i
) intersects every set belonging to F
0

and
hence must belong to F
0
by maximality. Therefore,
n

i=1
f
−1
α
i
(U
α
i
) ∈ F
0
,
again by maximality. This says that U intersects every set of F
0
. In other
words, any neighborhood of x intersects every set belonging to F
0
, which is just
another way of saying x b e longs to the closure of every set belonging to F
0
.
QED
1.14 Urysohn’s lemma.
A topological space S is called normal if it is Hausdorff, and if for any pair
F

1
, F
2
of closed sets with F
1
∩ F
2
= ∅ there are disjoint open sets U
1
, U
2
with
F
1
⊂ U
1
and F
2
⊂ U
2
. For example, suppose that S is Hausdorff and compact.
For each p ∈ F
1
and q ∈ F
2
there are neighborhoods O
q
of p and W
q
of q with

O
q
∩ W
q
= ∅. This is the Hausdorff axiom. A finite number of the W
q
cover
F
2
since it is compact. Let the intersection of the corresponding O
q
be called
U
p
and the union of the corresponding W
q
be called V
p
. Thus for each p ∈ F
1
we have found a neighborhood U
p
of p and an open set V
p
containing F
2
with