Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2017 iii Paper 106 2 a Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-05
The weak topology is the coarsest topology making every bounded linear functional continuous. A neighbourhood basis at consists of sets for finite families in .
Mazur theorem says that for any convex subset of a real or complex normed vector space,The norm closure is convex. If is outside it, the Hahn-Banach separation theorem gives a bounded linear functional and a real with . In the real case omit the real part. Thus has a weak neighbourhood missing , proving that the weak closure lies in the norm closure. The other inclusion follows because the weak topology is weaker than the norm topology. In the complex case real separation is converted to a complex functional by .
The sequential formulation, Mazur lemma, follows as well. If , then lies in the weak closure of each tail and hence in the norm closure of its convex hull. Select a finite convex combination of the th tail at norm distance less than from .
A weakly bounded set satisfies for every . Regard as a pointwise bounded family of functionals on . The completeness of the dual space holds even if is incomplete: a norm-Cauchy sequence of functionals has a pointwise bounded linear limit and then converges uniformly on the unit ball. The Uniform boundedness principle therefore gives , and proves norm boundedness.
One can see the precise Baire argument here. The closed sets cover the Banach space . The Baire category theorem makes some contain a ball , after shrinking the radius. For , both and lie in , so . Scaling and the dual norm formula yield . A weakly compact set is weakly bounded because each functional has compact, hence bounded, image. Consequently it is norm bounded.
For a Banach space, let be its canonical isometry. We use two explicitly stated weak-star facts: Banach-Alaoglu theorem makes a dual unit ball weak-star compact, and Goldstine theorem makes weak-star dense in . The weak topology on is carried by to on its image, since their coordinates are the same evaluations .
If is a reflexive Banach space, and Banach-Alaoglu proves weak compactness. Conversely, if is weakly compact, its image is weak-star compact and hence closed in the Hausdorff space . Goldstine density then forces , which implies . This proves the weak compactness characterization of reflexivity:Finally let be weakly compact and let separate points. If is empty there is nothing to prove; otherwise defineThe summands are bounded by and separation makes only for . The coordinate maps are weakly continuous, so the series, being uniformly convergent, makes the identity from weak to metric continuous. A continuous bijection from a compact space to a Hausdorff space is a homeomorphism. Thus induces precisely the weak topology on , the countable separating family metrizes a weakly compact set result. No norm-density of the separating family in is claimed or required.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2017 iii Paper 106 2 b i Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-05
For each , evaluation is a bounded linear functional of norm one. Thus weak convergence to zero gives at every . The set is a weakly bounded set, since every scalar sequence converges, and part (a) supplies a uniform bound .
The constant is integrable for Lebesgue measure on . Applying the dominated convergence theorem to gives the weakly null continuous functions converge in L1 conclusionPointwise convergence alone would not provide the needed uniform dominating function; it is the weak boundedness argument that supplies it.
Weak convergence to zero gives pointwise convergence by the continuous evaluation functionals and uniform boundedness in the supremum norm by the weakly bounded set criterion. The dominated convergence theorem for Lebesgue measure then proves the displayed implication. The finite measure of the interval and uniform norm bound are the relevant hypotheses.