Weak convergence (Hilbert space)

In mathematics, weak convergence in a Hilbert space is convergence of a sequence of points in the weak topology.

Definition

A sequence of points in a Hilbert space H is said to converge weakly to a point x in H if

for all y in H. Here, is understood to be the inner product on the Hilbert space. The notation

is sometimes used to denote this kind of convergence.

Properties

and this inequality is strict whenever the convergence is not strong. For example, infinite orthonormal sequences converge weakly to zero, as demonstrated below.

Example

The first 3 curves in the sequence fn=sin(nx)
The first 3 functions in the sequence on . As converges weakly to .

The Hilbert space is the space of the square-integrable functions on the interval equipped with the inner product defined by

(see Lp space). The sequence of functions defined by

converges weakly to the zero function in , as the integral

tends to zero for any square-integrable function on when goes to infinity, i.e.

Although has an increasing number of 0's in as goes to infinity, it is of course not equal to the zero function for any . Note that does not converge to 0 in the or norms. This dissimilarity is one of the reasons why this type of convergence is considered to be "weak."

Weak convergence of orthonormal sequences

Consider a sequence which was constructed to be orthonormal, that is,

where equals one if m = n and zero otherwise. We claim that if the sequence is infinite, then it converges weakly to zero. A simple proof is as follows. For xH, we have

(Bessel's inequality)

where equality holds when {en} is a Hilbert space basis. Therefore

(since the series above converges, its corresponding sequence must go to zero)

i.e.

Banach–Saks theorem

The Banach–Saks theorem states that every bounded sequence contains a subsequence and a point x such that

converges strongly to x as N goes to infinity.

Generalizations

The definition of weak convergence can be extended to Banach spaces. A sequence of points in a Banach space B is said to converge weakly to a point x in B if

for any bounded linear functional defined on , that is, for any in the dual space If is a Hilbert space, then, by the Riesz representation theorem, any such has the form

for some in , so one obtains the Hilbert space definition of weak convergence.

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