Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2008 iii Paper 1 8 d Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
One implication is immediate: a unitary module equivalence makes each space an isometric copy of the entire other space, which is closed and invariant. For the converse, choose isometric intertwiners and supplied by the two embeddings. Their ranges are closed reducing subspaces. We construct the unitary, proving the Schröder-Bernstein theorem for Hilbert space modules in this setting.
Put , an isometric intertwiner of into itself, and let . The spaces , , are mutually orthogonal. For , applying the isometry relation reduces their inner product to one between and , which is zero. Henceis a closed reducing submodule of , and . Its orthogonal complement lies in , because it is orthogonal to . Combining these decompositions givesApply the inverse isometry on to obtainThe operatoris therefore an isometry onto : it is isometric on each orthogonal summand and their images are the two orthogonal summands just exhibited. Both pieces intertwine the action of , as do the projections onto and , so is a unitary module equivalence. This proves the reverse implication with no finiteness assumption on either module.