Schur's property

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In mathematics, Schur's property, named after Issai Schur, is the property of normed spaces that is satisfied precisely if weak convergence of sequences entails convergence in norm.

Motivation

When we are working in a normed space X and we have a sequence [math]\displaystyle{ (x_{n}) }[/math] that converges weakly to [math]\displaystyle{ x }[/math], then a natural question arises. Does the sequence converge in perhaps a more desirable manner? That is, does the sequence converge to [math]\displaystyle{ x }[/math] in norm? A canonical example of this property, and commonly used to illustrate the Schur property, is the [math]\displaystyle{ \ell_1 }[/math] sequence space.

Definition

Suppose that we have a normed space (X, ||·||), [math]\displaystyle{ x }[/math] an arbitrary member of X, and [math]\displaystyle{ (x_{n}) }[/math] an arbitrary sequence in the space. We say that X has Schur's property if [math]\displaystyle{ (x_{n}) }[/math] converging weakly to [math]\displaystyle{ x }[/math] implies that [math]\displaystyle{ \lim_{n\to\infty} \Vert x_n - x\Vert = 0 }[/math]. In other words, the weak and strong topologies share the same convergent sequences. Note however that weak and strong topologies are always distinct in infinite-dimensional space.

Examples

The space 1 of sequences whose series is absolutely convergent has the Schur property.

Name

This property was named after the early 20th century mathematician Issai Schur who showed that 1 had the above property in his 1921 paper.[1]

See also

  • Radon-Riesz property for a similar property of normed spaces
  • Schur's theorem

Notes

  1. J. Schur, "Über lineare Transformationen in der Theorie der unendlichen Reihen", Journal für die reine und angewandte Mathematik, 151 (1921) pp. 79-111

References

  • An Introduction to Banach Space Theory, New York Berlin Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag, 1998, ISBN 0-387-98431-3