 Banach space

A Banach space is a normed vector space over the real numbers or complex numbers that is complete for the metric $d(x,y)=\Vert x-y\Vert$. Explicitly, whenever a sequence $(x_n)$ satisfiesthere is an element $x$ of the same space with $\Vert x_n-x\Vert \to 0$. The hypothesis says that the approximations eventually agree to any requested accuracy; completeness says that they describe an actual object in the space. The Cauchy sequence condition can be checked before anyone knows what that object is.

This makes a Banach space a natural setting for constructing solutions by successive improvements. If corrections $v_k$ have ${\sum }_k\Vert v_k\Vert <\infty$, their partial sums form a Cauchy sequence by the triangle inequality, and completeness supplies their sum. In fact, convergence of every such absolutely summable vector series characterizes a Banach space. The contraction mapping theorem uses precisely this mechanism: each correction is smaller than the preceding one by a fixed factor.^[ref]

Every normed vector space of finite dimension is a Banach space. Infinite-dimensional examples include the absolutely summable sequence space and the l-infinity sequence space; the choice of norm remains part of the specification. A collection of increasingly accurate finite descriptions can require an infinite description for its limit, as the finitely supported sequence example below demonstrates. Completion of a normed space adds these missing limits while preserving all original distances.

A **Banach space** is a type of mathematical space that is fundamental in functional analysis, a branch of mathematics. Formally, a Banach space is defined as a complete normed vector space.