Logical equivalence of the fundamental theorems on operators between Banach spaces (Q2191636): Difference between revisions

It is conventional wisdom that some of the ``grand'' theorems of functional analysis are equivalent to each other in the sense that one can be deduced from the others without much effort. This paper provides six such proofs for all the implications between the closed graph theorem (CGT), the open mapping theorem (OMT), and the bounded inverse theorem (BIT). The authors also show how to derive the uniform boundedness principle (UBP) from CGT. Most interestingly, they present a proof (due to N.~Eldredge) that UBP directly implies half of OMT, namely, that a surjective operator \(T\) between Banach spaces \(X\) and \(Y\) (actually, from a normed space to a Banach space) is almost open, meaning that the closure of \(T(B_X)\) is a \(0\)-neighbourhood in~\(Y\). Reviewer's remarks: (1) The authors' proof that CGT implies BIT is not convincing to me. (2) One upshot of these equivalences is that, in principle, all these theorems can be proved without the Baire category theorem; \textit{A. D. Sokal} recently provided such a short and elegant proof of UBP in [Am. Math. Mon. 118, No. 5, 450--452 (2011; Zbl 1223.46022)]. For the record, it should be noted that the first ever proofs of UBP, due to Hans Hahn and Stefan Banach, also used a gliding hump argument.