We first justify the maximum in the proposed supremum norm. If a null sequence is nonzero, choose an index with . All sufficiently late terms have absolute value smaller than , since . Hence the largest absolute value occurs among a finite initial set of terms, and is finite. For the zero sequence the maximum is zero.
The norm axioms now follow directly. The maximum is nonnegative and vanishes precisely when every coordinate vanishes. For a scalar , . For two null sequences, coordinatewise addition remains a null sequence and
Taking the maximum proves the triangle inequality, so this really is a norm on .
Let have a single in position . If , then . A convergent sequence in a normed vector space must be a Cauchy sequence, by the triangle inequality. These distances violate the Cauchy condition with, for example, . Thus does not converge in this norm, even though each fixed coordinate converges to zero.
A real sequence converges to a finite limit if
A series converges when its partial sums form a convergent sequence with a finite limit. These are different conditions: a series concerns accumulated terms, whereas sequence convergence concerns the terms themselves.
If , then as well and . Explicitly, choose large enough that both partial sums lie within of ; the triangle inequality gives . Hence convergence of a series forces its terms to tend to zero.
For the converse, take . This is a null sequence, but its harmonic series diverges. In each block , there are terms each at least , so the block contributes at least . Thus
A zero limit for the terms is necessary, but not sufficient, for convergent series.
The space of test functions is
A sequence converges to in when all supports lie in one compact set and
for every nonnegative integer . The distribution space is the continuous dual space of , and in means
for every test function .
If a linear form is continuous, it clearly maps every null sequence to a scalar sequence tending to zero. Conversely, suppose it has this sequential property. For each compact , its restriction to the Fréchet space must be continuous: otherwise, for every one could choose such that
Then in but its images do not tend to zero, a contradiction. Continuity on every is precisely continuity for the strict inductive limit topology of , so .
Use the convention . Translation and the distributional derivative are defined by
Translation, differentiation, and multiplication by are continuous maps on , so these formulas define continuous linear functionals and hence distributions.
For fixed , the difference quotient satisfies
Therefore
which proves in .
For , integration by parts after subtracting the value at zero gives
The subtraction makes the integrand locally integrable at zero, and handles the other boundary.
The analogous Hadamard finite-part integral is
Indeed, integrating from and combining the boundary term with the divergent constant part of the integral gives this limit.
Because is a locally integrable function, its first distributional derivative has order at most one. It is not of order zero. Choose with and put . The sup norms stay bounded while
is unbounded as . This contradicts the local sup-norm estimate required of an order-zero distribution. Hence has order exactly .