Past exam of the functional analysis II course of the University of Oxford 2023 1 b ii Solution 2026-10-25
The orthogonal complement is infinite-dimensional: otherwise would be finite-dimensional. Inductively choose an orthonormal sequence in , each new vector being orthogonal to the preceding finite linear span. The Bessel inequality gives for every , so . Thus is a weakly null orthonormal sequence.
SetBy orthogonality, , while for every . Hence . When , this formula simply gives the constant sequence . In particular, the weak closure of the unit sphere contains the whole closed unit ball.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2025 iii Paper 106 4 a Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-09-25
For a real locally convex space , the continuous dual space consists of all continuous real-linear maps . If on a subspace , continuity gives seminorms and such thatThe right side is a continuous sublinear functional on . The dominated Hahn-Banach theorem extends to a linear satisfying the same bound, so .
If is closed and , the Hausdorff locally convex quotient has a continuous seminorm with . On , define and rescale so that . Hahn--Banach extends it to with and .
The separation of a point and an open convex set says that if is nonempty, open, and convex and , there is such thatTo prove it, choose , put , and let be its Minkowski functional. For , . Define on ; then . Hahn--Banach extends to . Since for , one has , proving the claim.
If is closed and convex and , a Hahn-Banach separation theorem gives and a real number separating from . The corresponding inverse image of an open interval is a weak neighbourhood of disjoint from , so is closed in .
The unit sphere of a normed space is norm closed. If is infinite-dimensional, every basic weak neighbourhood of an interior point constrains only finitely many functionals . Their common kernel contains a nonzero . Continuity of , together with its value below one at and divergence as , supplies with . Since all have the same values at and , every weak neighbourhood of meets . Points outside are separated from it by Hahn--Banach, so the weak closure of the unit sphere is exactly . In particular, is not weakly closed.