In mathematics, any vector space has a corresponding dual vector space (or just dual space for short) consisting of all on together with the vector space structure of pointwise addition and scalar multiplication by constants.
The dual space as defined above is defined for all vector spaces, and to avoid ambiguity may also be called the . When defined for a topological vector space, there is a subspace of the dual space, corresponding to continuous linear functionals, called the continuous dual space.
Dual vector spaces find application in many branches of mathematics that use vector spaces, such as in tensor analysis with finite-dimensional vector spaces. When applied to vector spaces of functions (which are typically infinite-dimensional), dual spaces are used to describe measures, distributions, and . Consequently, the dual space is an important concept in functional analysis.
Early terms for dual include polarer Raum Hahn, espace conjugué, adjoint space Alaoglu, and transponierter Raum Schauder and Banach. The term dual is due to Nicolas Bourbaki 1938.
uses to denote the algebraic dual of ''''. However, other authors use for the continuous dual, while reserving for the algebraic dual ().is defined as the set of all (linear functionals). Since linear maps are vector space , the dual space may be denoted . The dual space itself becomes a vector space over when equipped with an addition and scalar multiplication satisfying:
(\varphi + \psi)(x) &= \varphi(x) + \psi(x) \\ (a \varphi)(x) &= a \left(\varphi(x)\right)\end{align} for all , , and .
Elements of the algebraic dual space are sometimes called covectors, one-forms, or .
The pairing of a functional in the dual space and an element of is sometimes denoted by a bracket: p. 21, §14 or . This pairing defines a nondegenerate bilinear mappingIn many areas, such as quantum mechanics, is reserved for a sesquilinear form defined on . called the natural pairing.
Consider the basis of V. Let be defined as the following:
.
These are a basis of because:
For example, if is , let its basis be chosen as . The basis vectors are not orthogonal to each other. Then, and are (functions that map a vector to a scalar) such that , , , and . (Note: The superscript here is the index, not an exponent.) This system of equations can be expressed using matrix notation as
In general, when is , if is a matrix whose columns are the basis vectors and is a matrix whose columns are the dual basis vectors, then
In particular, can be interpreted as the space of columns of , its dual space is typically written as the space of rows of real numbers. Such a row acts on as a linear functional by ordinary matrix multiplication. This is because a functional maps every -vector into a real number . Then, seeing this functional as a matrix , and as an matrix, and a matrix (trivially, a real number) respectively, if then, by dimension reasons, must be a matrix; that is, must be a row vector.
If consists of the space of geometrical vectors in the plane, then the level set of an element of form a family of parallel lines in , because the range is 1-dimensional, so that every point in the range is a multiple of any one nonzero element. So an element of can be intuitively thought of as a particular family of parallel lines covering the plane. To compute the value of a functional on a given vector, it suffices to determine which of the lines the vector lies on. Informally, this "counts" how many lines the vector crosses. More generally, if is a vector space of any dimension, then the level sets of a linear functional in are parallel hyperplanes in , and the action of a linear functional on a vector can be visualized in terms of these hyperplanes.
For instance, consider the space , whose elements are those of real numbers that contain only finitely many non-zero entries, which has a basis indexed by the natural numbers . For , is the sequence consisting of all zeroes except in the -th position, which is 1. The dual space of is (isomorphic to) , the space of all sequences of real numbers: each real sequence defines a function where the element of is sent to the number
which is a finite sum because there are only finitely many nonzero . The dimension of is countably infinite, whereas does not have a countable basis.
This observation generalizes to any infinite-dimensional vector space over any field : a choice of basis identifies with the space of functions such that is nonzero for only finitely many , where such a function is identified with the vector
in (the sum is finite by the assumption on , and any may be written uniquely in this way by the definition of the basis).
The dual space of may then be identified with the space of all functions from to : a linear functional on is uniquely determined by the values it takes on the basis of , and any function (with ) defines a linear functional on by
Again, the sum is finite because is nonzero for only finitely many .
The set may be identified (essentially by definition) with the direct sum of infinitely many copies of (viewed as a 1-dimensional vector space over itself) indexed by , i.e. there are linear isomorphisms
On the other hand, is (again by definition), the direct product of infinitely many copies of indexed by , and so the identification
If a vector space is not finite-dimensional, then its (algebraic) dual space is always of larger dimension (as a cardinal number) than the original vector space. This is in contrast to the case of the continuous dual space, discussed below, which may be isomorphic to the original vector space even if the latter is infinite-dimensional.
The proof of this inequality between dimensions results from the following.
If is an infinite-dimensional -vector space, the arithmetical properties of cardinal numbers implies that
where the right hand side is defined as the functional on V taking each to . In other words, the bilinear form determines a linear mapping
defined by
If the bilinear form is nondegenerate, then this is an isomorphism onto a subspace of V∗. If V is finite-dimensional, then this is an isomorphism onto all of V∗. Conversely, any isomorphism from V to a subspace of V∗ (resp., all of V∗ if V is finite dimensional) defines a unique nondegenerate bilinear form on V by
Thus there is a one-to-one correspondence between isomorphisms of V to a subspace of (resp., all of) V∗ and nondegenerate bilinear forms on V.
If the vector space V is over the complex numbers field, then sometimes it is more natural to consider sesquilinear forms instead of bilinear forms. In that case, a given sesquilinear form determines an isomorphism of V with the complex conjugate of the dual space
\Phi_{\langle \cdot, \cdot \rangle} : V\to \overline{V^*}.The conjugate of the dual space can be identified with the set of all additive complex-valued functionals such that
f(\alpha v) = \overline{\alpha}f(v).
f^*(\varphi) = \varphi \circ f \,for every . The resulting functional in is called the pullback of along .
The following identity holds for all and :
[f^*(\varphi),\, v] = [\varphi,\, f(v)],where the bracket ·,· on the left is the natural pairing of V with its dual space, and that on the right is the natural pairing of W with its dual. This identity characterizes the transpose, §44 and is formally similar to the definition of the adjoint.
The assignment produces an injective linear map between the space of linear operators from V to W and the space of linear operators from W to V; this homomorphism is an isomorphism if and only if W is finite-dimensional. If then the space of linear maps is actually an algebra under composition of maps, and the assignment is then an antihomomorphism of algebras, meaning that . In the language of category theory, taking the dual of vector spaces and the transpose of linear maps is therefore a contravariant functor from the category of vector spaces over F to itself. It is possible to identify ( f) with f using the natural injection into the double dual.
If the linear map f is represented by the matrix A with respect to two bases of V and W, then f is represented by the transpose matrix AT with respect to the dual bases of W and V, hence the name. Alternatively, as f is represented by A acting on the left on column vectors, f is represented by the same matrix acting on the right on row vectors. These points of view are related by the canonical inner product on R n, which identifies the space of column vectors with the dual space of row vectors.
The annihilator of a subset is itself a vector space. The annihilator of the zero vector is the whole dual space: , and the annihilator of the whole space is just the zero covector: . Furthermore, the assignment of an annihilator to a subset of reverses inclusions, so that if , then
\{ 0 \} \subseteq T^0 \subseteq S^0 \subseteq V^* .
If and are two subsets of then
A^0 + B^0 \subseteq (A \cap B)^0 .If is any family of subsets of indexed by belonging to some index set , then
\left( \bigcup_{i\in I} A_i \right)^0 = \bigcap_{i\in I} A_i^0 .In particular if and are subspaces of then
(A + B)^0 = A^0 \cap B^0and
(A \cap B)^0 = A^0 + B^0 .
If is finite-dimensional and is a vector subspace, then
W^{00} = Wafter identifying with its image in the second dual space under the double duality isomorphism . In particular, forming the annihilator is a Galois connection on the lattice of subsets of a finite-dimensional vector space.
If is a subspace of then the quotient space is a vector space in its own right, and so has a dual. By the first isomorphism theorem, a functional factors through if and only if is in the kernel of . There is thus an isomorphism
This arises in physics via dimensional analysis, where the dual space has inverse units. as the dual space to ... }} Under the natural pairing, these units cancel, and the resulting scalar value is dimensionless, as expected. For example, in (continuous) Fourier analysis, or more broadly time–frequency analysis:To be precise, continuous Fourier analysis studies the space of functionals with domain a vector space and the space of functionals on the dual vector space. given a one-dimensional vector space with a unit of time , the dual space has units of frequency: occurrences per unit of time (units of ). For example, if time is measured in , the corresponding dual unit is the inverse second: over the course of 3 seconds, an event that occurs 2 times per second occurs a total of 6 times, corresponding to . Similarly, if the primal space measures length, the dual space measures inverse length.
For a topological vector space its continuous dual space, or topological dual space, or just dual space (in the sense of the theory of topological vector spaces) is defined as the space of all continuous linear functionals .
Important examples for continuous dual spaces are the space of compactly supported test functions and its dual the space of arbitrary distributions (generalized functions); the space of arbitrary test functions and its dual the space of compactly supported distributions; and the space of rapidly decreasing test functions the Schwartz space, and its dual the space of tempered distributions (slowly growing distributions) in the theory of generalized functions.
where is a continuous linear functional on , and runs over the class
This means that a net of functionals tends to a functional in if and only if
Usually (but not necessarily) the class is supposed to satisfy the following conditions:
If these requirements are fulfilled then the corresponding topology on is Hausdorff and the sets
form its local base.
Here are the three most important special cases.
Each of these three choices of topology on leads to a variant of Reflexive space for topological vector spaces:
Define the number q by . Then the continuous dual of ℓ p is naturally identified with ℓ q: given an element , the corresponding element of is the sequence where denotes the sequence whose -th term is 1 and all others are zero. Conversely, given an element , the corresponding continuous linear functional on is defined by
for all (see Hölder's inequality).
In a similar manner, the continuous dual of is naturally identified with (the space of bounded sequences). Furthermore, the continuous duals of the Banach spaces c (consisting of all convergent sequences, with the supremum norm) and c0 (the sequences converging to zero) are both naturally identified with .
By the Riesz representation theorem, the continuous dual of a Hilbert space is again a Hilbert space which is antiisomorphic to the original space. This gives rise to the bra–ket notation used by physicists in the mathematical formulation of quantum mechanics.
By the Riesz–Markov–Kakutani representation theorem, the continuous dual of certain spaces of continuous functions can be described using measures.
The resulting functional is in . The assignment produces a linear map between the space of continuous linear maps from V to W and the space of linear maps from to . When T and U are composable continuous linear maps, then
When V and W are normed spaces, the norm of the transpose in is equal to that of T in . Several properties of transposition depend upon the Hahn–Banach theorem. For example, the bounded linear map T has dense range if and only if the transpose is injective.
When T is a Compact operator linear map between two Banach spaces V and W, then the transpose is compact. This can be proved using the Arzelà–Ascoli theorem.
When V is a Hilbert space, there is an antilinear isomorphism iV from V onto its continuous dual . For every bounded linear map T on V, the transpose and the adjoint operators are linked by
When T is a continuous linear map between two topological vector spaces V and W, then the transpose is continuous when and are equipped with "compatible" topologies: for example, when for and , both duals have the strong topology of uniform convergence on bounded sets of X, or both have the weak-∗ topology of pointwise convergence on X. The transpose is continuous from to , or from to .
Then, the dual of the quotient can be identified with W⊥, and the dual of W can be identified with the quotient . Indeed, let P denote the canonical surjection from V onto the quotient ; then, the transpose is an isometric isomorphism from into , with range equal to W⊥. If j denotes the injection map from W into V, then the kernel of the transpose is the annihilator of W:
As a consequence of the Hahn–Banach theorem, this map is in fact an isometry, meaning for all . Normed spaces for which the map Ψ is a bijection are called reflexive space.
When V is a topological vector space then Ψ( x) can still be defined by the same formula, for every , however several difficulties arise. First, when V is not locally convex, the continuous dual may be equal to { 0 } and the map Ψ trivial. However, if V is Hausdorff space and locally convex, the map Ψ is injective from V to the algebraic dual of the continuous dual, again as a consequence of the Hahn–Banach theorem.If V is locally convex but not Hausdorff, the kernel of Ψ is the smallest closed subspace containing {0}.
Second, even in the locally convex setting, several natural vector space topologies can be defined on the continuous dual , so that the continuous double dual is not uniquely defined as a set. Saying that Ψ maps from V to , or in other words, that Ψ( x) is continuous on for every , is a reasonable minimal requirement on the topology of , namely that the evaluation mappings
be continuous for the chosen topology on . Further, there is still a choice of a topology on , and continuity of Ψ depends upon this choice. As a consequence, defining reflexivity in this framework is more involved than in the normed case.
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