Basic sequence

A basic sequence in a Banach space is a sequence that is a Schauder basis for its closed linear span.

Every bounded sequence in a Banach space has either a weakly Cauchy sequence as a subsequence or a subsequence equivalent to the unit vector basis of ${\ell }^1$. The real-scalar proof represents vectors as continuous functions on a compact dual ball and uses infinite Ramsey theory to select independent lower and upper level sets when pointwise convergence cannot be obtained.

For $K\ge 1$, let $T_K(X)$ consist of finite normalized sequences satisfying $K^{-1}\sum |a_i|\le \Vert \sum a_i{x}_i\Vert \le \sum |a_i|$ for every scalar combination. Its tree order measures the depth of finite copies of the unit vector basis of ${\ell }^1$. A separable Banach space containing no copy of ${\ell }^1$ has a countable index because every such tree is closed and well-founded. Countable well-founded trees can be used to construct separable reflexive spaces with arbitrarily high index, precluding a separable reflexive universal space.

An unconditional basic sequence is a Schauder basis for its closed span whose expansions converge after arbitrary permutations or coordinate suppressions. Equivalently, the finite coordinate projections are uniformly bounded. Failure of this property gives pairs of disjointly supported unit vectors at arbitrarily small distance, obtained by separating a finite combination with a large coordinate projection.

Let $T_C(X)$ consist of finite normalized sequences for which every scalar combination and sign change satisfy $\Vert {\sum }_i{\epsilon }_i{a}_i{x}_i\Vert \le C\Vert {\sum }_i{a}_i{x}_i\Vert$. These inequalities give a closed tree on a Polish space when $X$ is separable. An infinite branch is an unconditional basic sequence. If there is no such sequence, each fixed-constant tree is well-founded and has countable rank of a well-founded tree. Consequently, finite unconditional configurations with one fixed constant and arbitrarily high countable ranks force an infinite unconditional sequence.

A basic sequence is suppression-unconditional with constant $C$ if every coordinate deletion satisfies the displayed inequality. When $C=1$, deletion never increases the norm. Uniformly bounded finite-coordinate projections imply unconditional convergence of the basis expansions; for real scalars, the sign-change constant is at most $2C$.

A normalized basic sequence generates a spreading model when the norms of all finite scalar combinations converge as the first index tends to infinity, uniformly over increasing choices of the indices. The limiting norm on finitely supported scalar sequences is unchanged by increasing relabellings of coordinates. Completing this norm gives a Banach space with its canonical basic sequence. A diagonal application of the finite-colour infinite Ramsey theorem produces such a model from a subsequence of every normalized basic sequence.

If a bounded subset $K$ of a Banach space is bounded away from zero and zero lies in its weak closure, then $K$ contains a basic sequence. More generally, weak closure may be replaced by closure in any Hausdorff locally convex vector topology weaker than the weak topology.