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if and only if every is with in exactly one way; equivalently, if and only if the sum is and with forces every
Statement
Let be a vector space over a field (Vector space over a field), let , and let be a finite family of linear subspaces of indexed by (The sum of two linear subspaces and the sum of a finite family). Call a list admissible when for every . The following are equivalent.
- (a) (Internal direct sum : the sum is everything and each summand meets the sum of the others only in ).
- (b) For every there is exactly one admissible list with .
- (c) , and the only admissible list with is the list with for every .
Facts & Assumptions
Given: A field , a vector space over , a natural number , and a finite family of linear subspaces of indexed by ; a list is called admissible when for every .
means (D1) and (D2) for every , where for the family with for and (Internal direct sum : the sum is everything and each summand meets the sum of the others only in ).
The elements of are exactly the vectors with admissible; it is a linear subspace of ; the mixed identity (F2) holds; and by (F3) with (F1), for , where agrees with off and has , while a list vanishing off a single index sums to its value there (The sum of two linear subspaces and the sum of a finite family, The product of a finite list in a monoid, by recursion, with the empty product () equal to the identity).
A linear subspace contains and is closed under and under scalar multiplication (Linear subspace of a vector space).
for every , and (In any vector space , , , , and forces or , Vector space over a field).
Cancellation in the abelian group : if then , and if then (Cancellation in a group: or forces ; equivalently left and right translation by are bijections of , so and each have exactly one solution, Group and abelian group).
is an abelian group: is associative and commutative, is a two-sided identity, and each has an additive inverse with (Vector space over a field, Group and abelian group).
The index runs over the von Neumann natural (The natural numbers (von Neumann), On the order is membership: ).
Proof
Let be admissible and . The list is admissible for the family , since for and ; hence lies in , and .
A linear subspace of is closed under additive inverses: for we have by closure under scalar multiplication, and .
Let and . The list with and for is admissible, each containing , and it sums to .
(c) implies (b). Assume (c). Existence: since , every is for some admissible . Uniqueness: suppose and are admissible with . The mixed identity with , applied to and in that order, gives , whose left-hand side is ; the list is admissible, each being closed under additive inverses and addition; so by (c) every , and cancelling on the left gives for every .
(a) implies (c). Assume (a). Condition (D1) is the first half of (c). For the second, let be admissible with and let . Writing , we get , while as well, so cancelling on the right gives ; and because that set is a linear subspace. Hence , which is by (D2), so . As was arbitrary, is the all-zero list.
(b) implies (a). Assume (b). For (D1): every is for some admissible , so , and the reverse inclusion holds because is a subset of . For (D2): let and . Then for some list admissible for ; such a has and for , so it is admissible for as well, containing . The list of step 1.3 is also admissible and also sums to , so uniqueness in (b) forces , and in particular . Since is contained in the intersection anyway, (D2) holds.
Steps 2.1, 1.4 and 2.2 give (a) implies (c), (c) implies (b) and (b) implies (a), so the three conditions are equivalent.
Remarks
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Condition (c) is the one used in practice. Checking uniqueness of every decomposition is checking a single one: that of . The reduction is the content of the implication from (c) to (b), and it works because the difference of two admissible decompositions of the same vector is an admissible decomposition of .
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This is what makes (D2) the right condition. If the definition of a direct sum had asked only for pairwise trivial intersections, the equivalence above would fail for : the companion examples page exhibits three linear subspaces of a plane whose pairwise intersections are trivial, whose sum is everything, and for which some vector has two different decompositions. So the equivalence proved here is not available for the pairwise notion, and (D2) is exactly the strengthening that restores it.
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The two-summand case reads as usual. For , condition (a) says and (Internal direct sum : the sum is everything and each summand meets the sum of the others only in ), and the lemma says that this holds exactly when every is with and in exactly one way.
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No finiteness of and no dimension anywhere. The family of summands is finite because the sum is defined through a finite sum of vectors; itself is arbitrary, and nothing above counts anything.
Depends on
- Internal direct sum $V = \bigoplus_{i<n} U_i$: the sum is everything and each summand meets the sum of the others only in $0_V$
- The sum $U + W$ of two linear subspaces and the sum $\sum_{i<n} U_i$ of a finite family
- Linear subspace of a vector space
- Vector space over a field
- In any vector space $0_F v = 0_V$, $\lambda 0_V = 0_V$, $(-\lambda)v = -(\lambda v)$, $(-1_F)v = -v$, and $\lambda v = 0_V$ forces $\lambda = 0_F$ or $v = 0_V$
- The product $g_0 g_1 \cdots g_{n-1}$ of a finite list in a monoid, by recursion, with the empty product ($n = 0$) equal to the identity
- Cancellation in a group: $gx = gy$ or $xg = yg$ forces $x = y$; equivalently left and right translation by $g$ are bijections of $G$, so $gx = h$ and $xg = h$ each have exactly one solution
- Group and abelian group
- The natural numbers $\mathbb{N}$ (von Neumann)
- On $\mathbb{N}$ the order is membership: $m < n \iff m \in n$
Used by
- Three lines in F² that meet pairwise only in 0 and whose sum is F² with decompositions that are not unique, so pairwise trivial intersection does not give a direct sum Counterexample
- In F³ the three coordinate lines are linear subspaces whose internal direct sum is F³, and F⁰ is the zero space Example
- Assuming the Axiom of Choice, ℝ has a Hamel basis over ℚ: there is B ⊆ ℝ such that every real is a finite ℚ-linear combination of elements of B in exactly one way, and each basis vector carries a well-defined ℚ-linear coefficient map Lemma
Dependency tree · next 3 levels
Direct dependencies and their dependencies through the next three levels: 56 results over 21 levels. An arrow runs from a result to what uses it, and this result sits at the bottom with a heavier outline. Click the chart to enlarge it.
Sources
- Direct sum of modules (Wikipedia) (standard reference, not scraped)
- S. Axler, Linear Algebra Done Right, 4th ed., Ch. 1 (standard reference, not scraped)
- Direct sum (Encyclopedia of Mathematics) (standard reference, not scraped)