By the spectral theorem, the operator in parentheses acts at spectral value by
The Poisson kernel converges to for , to at , and to outside . It is uniformly bounded, so dominated convergence in the spectral measure of a normal operator gives the strong limit
Applying this operator to proves the claimed Stone formula.
Stone formula Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-11-05
For a self-adjoint operator , fix the resolvent convention . For real , Stone formula states the strong-operator limit
Equivalently the integrand is . The endpoint halves are necessary when there are eigenvalues at the endpoints; if neither endpoint has a spectral atom, the limit is simply the interval spectral projection.[ref]
To see the limit, use the spectral theorem to replace the resolvent difference by the scalar kernel
It lies in . Its arctangent primitive tends to one inside , zero outside , and one half at each endpoint. For every vector , dominated convergence applied to proves convergence in norm after applying the operators to . This explains both the strong rather than necessarily operator-norm limit and the half weights.