Let be a Cauchy sequence in the operator norm. For each ,
so is a Cauchy sequence. Completeness of the Banach space permits the definition
. Pointwise passage to the limit proves that is a linear. A norm-Cauchy sequence is a bounded sequence, say , and therefore
, so is bounded. Finally, letting in
gives
. Thus in operator norm and
is Banach.
A Cauchy sequence in a metric space satisfies: for every there is such that whenever . A complete metric space is one in which every Cauchy sequence converges to a point of the space.
Every Cauchy sequence is bounded. Choose such that for , and put
Then every term lies in the ball .
Now suppose is complete and is a decreasing sequence of nonempty closed sets with . Choose . Given , choose with . For , both points lie in , so . Completeness gives . For each fixed , the tail lies in the closed set , hence . Therefore
Conversely, assume the nested-set property and let be Cauchy. Define
These sets are nonempty, closed, and decreasing. The Cauchy property implies ; taking a closure does not change the diameter. Choose . Since ,
Thus every Cauchy sequence converges and is complete. This proves the Cantor intersection theorem characterization.
The contraction mapping theorem states that a contraction of a nonempty complete metric space has a unique fixed point.
For each , the map is a contraction with the common constant , so it has a unique fixed point . This defines the required unique function. Fix . The fixed-point identities and the triangle inequality give
Consequently
The numerator tends to zero as by the assumed continuity for the fixed point . Hence is continuous, an instance of continuous dependence of the fixed point of a uniform contraction.
One strong form of Hensel lemma is this: if is complete for a discrete valuation , , and satisfies
then there is a unique root satisfying
Define the Newton iteration over a valued field
Taylor expansion and the ultrametric inequality show inductively that and
Thus the valuations of the corrections tend to infinity, so is a Cauchy sequence. Completeness gives a limit , and continuity gives . If is another root in the stated ball, Taylor expansion of shows that the linear term has strictly smaller valuation than all higher terms unless , proving uniqueness.
The continuous dual space of a normed vector space is
with the operator norm
Let be a Cauchy sequence in this norm. For each ,
so is Cauchy in the scalar field. Define . Passing to limits in the linearity identities shows that is linear.
A norm-Cauchy sequence is bounded, say . Hence , so . Given , choose such that for . Letting gives
for every , and therefore . Thus in operator norm, proving completeness of the dual space: is Banach.
The strong form of Hensel lemma says the following. Let be a discrete valuation on a complete field . If and
then has a root satisfying .
To prove it, apply Newton iteration over a valued field:
The initial inequality says that the first correction has valuation greater than . Taylor expansion then shows inductively that , while the valuations of the corrections tend to infinity. Hence is a Cauchy sequence. Completeness gives a limit , and continuity gives .
Now decompose the multiplicative group as
The P-adic valuation gives
and cubing is the identity on . Put . Expansion gives . Conversely, for , choose and put . For ,
so the strong form of Hensel lemma produces a cube root in . Thus . Finally,
is an isomorphism. Combining the valuation and principal-unit factors proves the cube-class group of the 3-adic numbers identity
The Rellich-Kondrachov compactness theorem says that if is a bounded Lipschitz domain, then
for when . When , the embedding is compact into every finite , and when it is compact into , hence into every .
The boundedness of the domain is essential. Choose a nonzero and set
Translation invariance gives , so after a fixed rescaling these functions lie in the unit ball. Their supports are pairwise disjoint and
No subsequence is Cauchy in , so the unit ball is not compact. This is the standard failure of Rellich compactness on an unbounded domain.
One useful form of Hensel lemma is this: if is a complete discrete valuation ring, , and
then there is a unique such that and . Indeed, after constructing with , choose the unique modulo for which
and put . The resulting Cauchy sequence converges by completeness, and the same first-order congruence proves uniqueness.
Apply this to . Every nonzero class in is a simple root, so it has a unique Teichmuller representative in . These give all roots of unity of order prime to . For odd , the group has no nontrivial torsion: if , then the binomial theorem gives , which is incompatible with finite -power order. Hence
For , the subgroup is torsion-free by the same argument, while supplies the extra torsion element. Thus . This describes the roots of unity in a p-adic field for .
The pointwise inequality implies
Every -Cauchy sequence is therefore -Cauchy. Since is geodesically complete, the Hopf-Rinow theorem makes a complete metric space, so in for some .
On a coordinate neighbourhood with compact closure around , smooth positive-definite Riemannian metrics are uniformly equivalent. Thus there is such that
there. For all sufficiently large , a short -geodesic from to stays in this neighbourhood, and hence
Thus is complete. Another application of Hopf-Rinow shows that is geodesically complete.
Let be Cauchy in the norm
Choose a subsequence for which
Tonelli theorem implies
almost surely. The subsequence therefore converges uniformly on , outside one null event, to a continuous process . For each , is the almost-sure limit of -measurable variables; completeness of the filtration makes the chosen version adapted. The same summable bound and monotone convergence theorem show that and that in norm.
Since the original sequence is Cauchy, the usual triangle argument upgrades convergence of the subsequence to in norm. Thus the space of indistinguishability classes is a Banach space.
For a bounded self-adjoint operator , every bounded sequence whose images converge has a norm-convergent subsequence exactly when its kernel is finite-dimensional and its range is closed, or equivalently for the essential spectrum of a bounded self-adjoint operator. Split the sequence into kernel and kernel complement: finite dimensionality gives a subsequence on the first part and the closed-range bound on the kernel complement makes the second part a Cauchy sequence. Infinite kernel or approximate null unit vectors in its complement obstruct the property.
Weakly Cauchy sequence Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-09-24
A sequence is weakly Cauchy when is a Cauchy sequence for every continuous linear functional . Its consecutive differences form a weakly null sequence.