Hahn–Banach extension theorem
Statement
Let be a real normed vector space, a linear subspace of , and a bounded linear functional on with for all . Then there exists a bounded linear functional on all of such that for every , and for every .
Why is it true?
It guarantees that a linear functional defined only on a small subspace — for instance, only knowing "the value of a signal at a few sample points" — can always be extended to the whole space without growing its bound; nothing ever forces us to be stuck working on a subspace.
Proof sketch
First extend by one dimension. Pick and let . We must choose the value so that for all ; dividing by and substituting , this reduces to needing with for all . Using , one checks the supremum of the left expressions over never exceeds the infimum of the right expressions over , so a valid in that interval exists; this defines on with the same bound .
Next, extend to all of using Zorn's Lemma. Consider the set of all pairs where is a subspace with and extends to with bound , partially ordered by iff and . Every chain has an upper bound (take the union of the subspaces and the functional agreeing with each on its domain), so Zorn's Lemma gives a maximal element .
Finally, if , the one-dimension extension step above applied to and any would produce a strictly larger admissible pair, contradicting maximality of . Hence , and is the desired bound-preserving extension to all of .
Topics that use this theorem
Step-by-step proofs
No step-by-step proof yet for this theorem.
References
- Walter Rudin (1991). Functional Analysis
- John B. Conway (2007). A Course in Functional Analysis
- Assaf Naor (2012). An introduction to the Ribe program · arXiv:1205.5993