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Approximation property

Mathematical concept

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Through Mathematics and Operator (mathematics)

Every Hilbert space has this property. There are, however, Banach spaces which do not; Per Enflo published the first counterexample in a 1973 article. However, much work in this area was done by Grothendieck (1955).

Later many other counterexamples were found. The space L(H) of bounded operators on an infinite-dimensional Hilbert space H does not have the approximation property. The spaces ℓp for p≠2 and c0 (see Sequence space) have closed subspaces that do not have the approximation property.

Definition

A locally convex topological vector space X is said to have the approximation property, if the identity map can be approximated, uniformly on precompact sets, by continuous linear maps of finite rank.

For a locally convex space X, the following are equivalent:

  1. X has the approximation property;
  2. the closure of X′⊗X in Lp⁡(X,X) contains the identity map Id:X→X;
  3. X′⊗X is dense in Lp⁡(X,X);
  4. for every locally convex space Y, X′⊗Y is dense in Lp⁡(X,Y);
  5. for every locally convex space Y, Y′⊗X is dense in Lp⁡(Y,X);

where Lp⁡(X,Y) denotes the space of continuous linear operators from X to Y endowed with the topology of uniform convergence on pre-compact subsets of X.

If X is a Banach space this requirement becomes that for every compact set K⊂X and every ε>0, there is an operator T:X→X of finite rank so that ‖Tx−x‖≤ε, for every x∈K.

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