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Separable dual implies separable primal
Statement
Assume the Axiom of Countable Choice and the relative Hahn–Banach principle HB. If the continuous dual of a real or complex normed space is norm separable, then is norm separable.
Facts & Assumptions
Given: , HB, a real or complex normed space , and the hypothesis that is separable in its norm topology.
Separability means that an at most countable dense subset exists, and a nonempty at most countable set is the image of a sequence (Separability: the existence of an at most countable dense subset, A nonempty set is at most countable iff it is a surjective image of ).
The dual norm is (The dual space X^* of a normed space and its dual norm).
Under HB, a point outside a nonempty closed convex set can be uniformly strictly separated from it by a nonzero continuous scalar-linear functional (Relative geometric Hahn–Banach with the exact open, closed, and compact hypotheses, The real dominated-extension principle as an additional hypothesis over ZF).
The rationals are countable and dense in the reals. Products of two at most countable sets are at most countable, and under a countable union of at most countable sets is at most countable ( is countably infinite, The rationals embed densely in the reals, A product of two at most countable sets is at most countable, Countable unions of at most countable sets, assuming , The Axiom of Countable Choice ()).
Proof
If , then itself is a finite dense subset of , so the conclusion holds. Henceforth suppose .
By [F1], choose an at most countable norm-dense subset . Enlarge it by the zero functional, so it is nonempty and [F1] supplies a sequence whose range is . This sequence is norm dense in .
For each , if set ; otherwise let The set is nonempty by [F2]. Apply to the family and choose for every . This is the only selection of an arbitrary countable family in the proof.
Let in the real case and in the complex case, and let be the -linear span of the sequence . The field is at most countable by [F4]. For each fixed number of summands, the coefficient-index tuples form a finite product of at most countable sets; the union over all finite lengths is at most countable by [F4]. Its image under evaluation is , so is at most countable. Density of in shows that is norm dense in the real or complex linear span of the .
Let vanish on . Then for every . Given , norm density of gives an with . By the definition of in step 1.3, where the first inequality is also true when . Therefore . Since this holds for every , .
Suppose that the norm closure were a proper subset of . It is a nonempty closed real-linear subspace, and in the complex case it is complex-linear because is dense in . Choose . By [F3] there is a nonzero strictly separating from . Because is a subspace and is bounded on one side there, scaling forces for every . In the complex case, applying this also to gives . Thus vanishes on , contradicting step 2.2. Consequently .
The at most countable set is norm dense in by steps 2.1 and 3.1, so is separable by [F1]. The use of is exactly the simultaneous choice in step 1.3 and the countable-union result in step 2.1; HB is used exactly in the separation step 3.1.
Source notes
Brezis proves the real Banach-space case by the same almost-norming sequence and annihilator argument. The proof above observes that completeness is not used, handles , makes the countability and choice steps explicit, and uses Gaussian-rational coefficients to cover complex normed spaces.
Depends on
- The dual space X^* of a normed space and its dual norm
- Separability: the existence of an at most countable dense subset
- Relative geometric Hahn–Banach with the exact open, closed, and compact hypotheses
- The Axiom of Countable Choice ($\mathrm{AC}_\omega$)
- The real dominated-extension principle as an additional hypothesis over ZF
- A nonempty set is at most countable iff it is a surjective image of $\mathbb{N}$
- $\mathbb{Q}$ is countably infinite
- The rationals embed densely in the reals
- A product of two at most countable sets is at most countable
- Countable unions of at most countable sets, assuming $\mathrm{AC}_\omega$
Used by
Dependency tree · two levels
49 results within two dependency steps of this one, each drawn at its shortest distance from it. An arrow runs from a result to what uses it, so the chart reads left to right and ends at this result, which carries a heavier outline. Every node is a link to that result. Click elsewhere on the chart to enlarge it.
Sources
- Haim Brezis, Functional Analysis, Sobolev Spaces and Partial Differential Equations, Theorem 3.26 (standard reference, not scraped)
- Bühler–Salamon, Functional Analysis, Theorem 2.73(i) (standard reference, not scraped)