 Sobolev duality

The continuous dual space of $H^s({\mathbb{R}}^d)$ is $H^{-s}({\mathbb{R}}^d)$ under the extension of the L2 inner product. The Fourier transform definition $\Vert f{\Vert }_{H^s}^2=\int (1+|\xi {|}^2{)}^s|\hat{f}(\xi ){|}^{2}d\xi$ proves boundedness of the pairing by the Cauchy-Schwarz inequality, and the Riesz representation theorem proves that every continuous functional has this form. Consequently a bounded linear operator $K:H^r\to H^{r+a}$ has an adjoint operator, relative to this pairing, from $H^{-r-a}$ to $H^{-r}$. For an operator that smooths by two orders for every $r$, this yields $K^{\ast }:H^2\to H^4$ by taking $r=-4$.