Basis pursuit 2026-10-05
Basis pursuit minimizes an norm subject to exact linear measurements. Basis pursuit with a noise tolerance replaces the equality by . A unique minimizer has linearly independent active columns, and hence at most nonzero coordinates: a null direction on its support would make the objective locally affine on a feasible line, contradicting minimality or uniqueness.
BDF2 discrete energy identity Created 2026-10-06 Updated 2026-10-14
For three vectors in an inner product space, expansion of each squared norm proves
Therefore the second-order backward differentiation formula with a dissipative operator decreases the discrete energy . This quadratic form is equivalent to the product norm of the two time levels with constants independent of and . It proves uniform stability even when amplification roots of a polynomial coalesce inside the unit disk, where an eigenvector-separation proof may lose its bound.
Bézier curve 2026-10-14
A Bézier curve is a parametric curve specified by control points in a Euclidean space and the Bernstein basis:
Here is a binomial coefficient. Each coordinate is a polynomial of polynomial degree at most ; special choices of control points can lower the polynomial degree. The ordered control points form the control polygon. A cubic Bézier curve uses four control points and has the explicit form
The curve passes through and ; the interior control points steer its shape and need not lie on it.[ref]
For a worked example, choose
Substituting these control points gives
Here , so neither interior control point, both at height , lies on the curve. De Casteljau's algorithm computes the same point using only successive linear interpolations.
The endpoint tangent vectors follow from the Bézier derivative control polygon:
Thus the curve leaves toward and arrives at from . These nonzero derivatives determine the endpoint tangent lines; if an endpoint derivative vanishes, that formula alone does not determine its tangent direction. Endpoint handles are useful when arranging a parametric first-derivative join of Bézier curves.
The parameter is usually not arc length. For this example,
Equal steps in therefore do not generally travel equal distances. Distance along the curve is instead the arc length, given by the integral ; its derivative is the norm of the tangent vector and measures the rate of travel.
Two geometric facts make Bézier curves especially convenient for design. First, the Bernstein basis weights are nonnegative and form a partition of unity, since the binomial theorem gives . Hence is a convex combination of the control points and lies in their convex hull.[ref] The convex hull is the smallest convex set containing the control points, not their axis-aligned bounding box. Here it is a trapezoid, strictly smaller than : the box corner is outside the convex hull. The curve need not fill or touch every edge of either enclosure. The convex hull guarantee concerns ; outside that interval weights can be negative.
Second, applying an affine map to every control point gives exactly the same result as applying it to the entire curve. For ,
This is affine equivariance of a geometric basis: a translation, rotation or shear mapping can be performed on a handful of control points. For example, transforms the four control points to and transforms the midpoint to , also obtained from the same weights .
These editable handles explain the usefulness of Bézier curves in computer aided geometric design, vector graphics paths and outline fonts: a small collection of points controls an entire smooth stroke, and resizing the design preserves its mathematical shape. Cambridge's computer-graphics notes describe their use in graphic design, typography and PostScript outlines. The industrial context includes Pierre Bézier's work at Renault and Paul de Casteljau's work at Citroën.[ref]
// Target: analysis.bigb
Bidual of a normed space Created 2026-10-05 Updated 2026-10-14
The bidual of a normed vector space is the continuous dual . Evaluation defines the canonical embedding into the bidual . The norm inequality gives , and a norming functional from the Hahn-Banach theorem gives equality. Thus is isometric, and its image is dense in its closure, a completion of a normed space.
Bilinearity Created 2026-10-05 Updated 2026-10-14
A map between vector spaces is bilinear when it is linear in either argument with the other held fixed. A scalar-valued bilinear form is the case and is the scalar field. Checking bilinearity is one of the algebraic steps in verifying a real inner product; being a symmetric bilinear form and having positive squared norm impose further conditions.
Bivector Created 2026-10-14 Updated 2026-10-14
A bivector is an element of the second exterior power . A simple bivector is one exterior product ; in real Euclidean space, it records the oriented area generated by those two vectors. A general bivector is a sum of such elements and need not describe just one plane. Covariant counterparts are differential two-forms, which take two vectors as inputs rather than belonging to .
In , choose
Expanding by bilinearity gives
The three coefficients are signed areas of the projections onto the , , and coordinate planes. They are three components of one bivector, not the three coordinates of either input vector.
Figure 1.
One bivector has three coordinate-plane area components in three dimensions
. Original parallelogram generated by and . The three planar panels show its projected signed areas , , and in the coordinate orders , , and . With the usual dot product, the full area is ; projected areas are components, so they are not added to obtain that area. Details.
With the usual dot product and a fixed orientation of a vector space, the cross product represents this area element by the normal vector . The order of the components matters: corresponds to , while corresponds to . The Gram determinant checks the full area:
Here the norm on bivectors is the one induced by the Euclidean inner product. The exterior product exists without that metric and in arbitrary dimension; the familiar cross product description relies on the additional three-dimensional geometry.
Block mixed norm 2026-10-06
The block mixed norm sums the norm of each block, for . Its dual norm is , where for and for . Apply Holder inequality blockwise and choose a norming block to attain equality. Absolute values are essential for signed components.
Born rule Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-14
The Born rule connects a quantum state to measurement probabilities. Let be a complete orthonormal basis, finite or countably infinite, for a Hilbert space, and let
An ideal measurement distinguishing these basis vectors returns label with probability
This assignment is a physical measurement rule. Its compatibility with total probability one follows from orthonormality and normalization:
The probabilities are the squared moduli, not the amplitudes themselves or the squares . [ref].
If the basis is an eigenbasis of an observable, the reported numerical value is its eigenvalue. Several vectors can share one eigenvalue; the probability of that value is then the sum over the corresponding basis labels. More generally, a projective measurement with orthogonal projections assigns
for a pure state and a general density matrix , respectively. This also covers mixed states and degenerate eigenspaces. The Born rule determines outcome statistics; the ideal conditional state change is specified separately by the Lüders rule. See projective measurement for that formulation and its assumptions. [ref].
For a worked example, take the normalized qubit quantum state
The squared moduli add to . A computational-basis measurement, equivalently a measurement of the Pauli matrix, has
These probabilities do not depend on the relative quantum phase . Now choose the Hadamard basis
whose vectors are eigenstates of the Pauli matrix, also used by the Pauli X gate. The new probability amplitudes and probabilities are
Both probabilities are nonnegative and their sum is one. The relative quantum phase becomes visible because the two probability amplitudes add before their squared modulus is taken:
  • At , and .
  • At , .
  • At , and .
Figure 1.
The same qubit preparation has phase-independent Z probabilities and phase-sensitive X probabilities
. Details.
A Hadamard gate followed by a computational-basis measurement realizes these statistics, since , respectively. Compare the two bases using fresh, identically prepared copies: a preceding measurement may change the state. The quantum superposition section shows why replacing the preparation by the mixed state keeps the statistics but gives for every .
The usefulness of the Born rule is this conversion from linear algebra to experimental predictions: calculate overlaps in the basis actually measured, then take squared moduli. Its appealing geometry is that changing basis redistributes probability while preserving total squared norm. The same rule relates an energy eigenstate expansion to an energy measurement and a position wavefunction to a probability density.
Born's 1926 paper on quantum scattering interpreted the outgoing-wave coefficients in terms of the probabilities of collision outcomes; a corrective footnote specified proportionality to the square of the amplitude. This is a historical scattering formulation, rather than the general density matrix formula above. [ref]; [ref].
Bounded bilinear form Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-14
A bilinear form on a real normed vector space is bounded when one constant satisfies
This is an upper bound on the magnitude of every pairing. It says nothing about the sign of and does not require a symmetric bilinear form. The chosen norm is part of the hypothesis. Boundedness is equivalent to joint continuity, as shown by the boundedness criterion for a bilinear form.[ref]
For example, on with the Euclidean norm, the bilinear forms
both satisfy the upper bound with , by the Cauchy-Schwarz inequality. Yet their quadratic forms are and : the former takes negative values and the latter vanishes at the nonzero vector . Thus neither is a coercive bilinear form. The latter is also a degenerate bilinear form, whereas is nondegenerate. Boundedness controls size, not positivity or loss of directions.
Every bilinear form on a real or complex finite-dimensional vector space equipped with any norm is bounded. In coordinates, write using its matrix of a bilinear form. The Cauchy-Schwarz inequality gives , with the spectral norm; finite-dimensional equivalence of norms transfers this to the chosen norm. The conclusion concerns each fixed norm and fixed bilinear form: it does not supply a single constant for an arbitrary family of matrices or changing dimensions.
On an infinite-dimensional vector space, the upper bound is an additional condition. Equip the finitely supported sequences with the norm inherited from the l2 sequence space and set
Each pairing is a finite sum, so this is a well-defined bilinear form. For the basis vector , however, and ; no finite works. It is even a coercive bilinear form with , since . Consequently coercivity alone does not imply boundedness on a normed vector space. This example uses , which is not a Hilbert space; it does not define this pairing on all of the l2 sequence space.
A bounded bilinear form defines a bounded linear operator by , where is the continuous dual space. Its operator norm is the smallest admissible :
This converts an upper bound for pairings into an upper bound for a linear map taking an unknown vector to a linear functional.
For a bounded Lipschitz domain, functions can be extended with the displayed bound and common compact support. Reflect across local Lipschitz boundary graphs, combine the reflected functions with a partition of unity, and multiply by a fixed cutoff function. Lipschitz coordinate changes control derivative measures; the product rule bounds cutoff function terms by the norm. Zero extension is also possible with an estimate for BV traces on a hypersurface, but its boundary jump must be included in the variation.
Bounded continuous functions Created 2026-10-07 Updated 2026-10-14
Bounded continuous functions on a topological space form a Banach space with the supremum norm. A uniform limit is continuous and bounded, proving completeness. This space differs from the bounded uniformly continuous functions: free-transport composition is jointly continuous in time and position, but need not be continuous in the global sup norm as time varies.
On a bounded Lipschitz domain, a sequence with bounded norms and bounded total variation seminorm has a subsequence converging strongly in . The limit is in the BV space, and its variation does not exceed the limit inferior. This supplies the compactness step of the direct method in the calculus of variations for linearly growing gradient energies.
The distributional derivative of this indicator function is on the vertical segment , so its total variation seminorm on a domain is one. This is singular with respect to planar Lebesgue measure, whereas Sobolev space weak derivatives in have integrable densities. Its bounded-variation space norm is .
Box norm Created 2026-10-05 Updated 2026-10-13
For nonempty finite sets and a function on their Cartesian product, using uniform expectations, define
This equals . Hence it is nonnegative, and vanishing forces by taking . Absolute homogeneity and the box Cauchy-Schwarz inequality establish that it is a norm. For a real-valued function the complex conjugates can be omitted. The bilinear correlation bound for the box norm also holds for complex functions.