Use the assumed separability of the Hilbert space to choose a countable Hilbertian basis . For , every scalar sequence is bounded. Repeated extraction followed by the diagonal subsequence argument gives one subsequence with all these coordinates converging, say to . The Bessel inequality gives for every , so exists and .
For , let be its finite basis truncation. Coordinate convergence gives , while the Cauchy-Schwarz inequality bounds the remaining inner product by , uniformly in . First choose large, then large. Thus
This proves the asserted sequential conclusion. To obtain actual compactness for the weak topology, note that on a bounded ball it is induced by the metric
Finite coordinates and the uniformly small tail show that gives coordinate convergence; uniform boundedness of the ball extends this to every inner product as above. Hence this metric induces exactly the restricted weak topology. In a metric space, sequential compactness implies compactness. The closed unit ball is therefore weakly compact, and the limit remains inside it.
Conversely, suppose
and define
For every , Bessel inequality and passage to the limit give
Hence . The partial sums are therefore Cauchy; completeness of the Hilbert space gives an element
Let . For fixed , coordinate convergence gives
The Hilbertian basis property gives , and
First choose large and then large. This proves
for every , so . This establishes the coordinate criterion for weak convergence in a separable Hilbert space.
If is compact and does not tend to zero, some subsequence has
. The vectors
are pairwise separated by at least , so they have no convergent subsequence, a contradiction.
Conversely, if , define the finite-rank operator
Then
An operator-norm limit of compact operators is compact, so is compact.
Separable Hilbert space 2026-09-28
A Hilbert space is separable when it has a countable dense subset, equivalently a countable Hilbertian basis.