On the Hahn decomposition theorem. (Q595910): Difference between revisions

The author defines a \(\sigma\)-semiring to be a semiring \({\mathcal S}\) of subsets of a set \(X\) with the property that \(A \backslash \cup_{n=1}^{\infty} A_n\) is the union of a disjoint sequence of sets in \({\mathcal S}\) whenever \(A \in {\mathcal S}\) and \(\{A_n\}\) itself is a disjoint sequence of sets in \({\mathcal S}\). A signed measure \(\mu\) on a semiring \({\mathcal S}\) has property \((*)\) if for each disjoint sequence \(\{B_n\}\) in \({\mathcal S}\) such that \(\cup_{n=1}^{\infty} B_n \in {\mathcal S}\), and each set \(K\) of positive integers, \(\mu( \cup_{n=1}^{\infty} B_n ) = \sum_{n \in K} \mu(B_n) + \sum_{n \not \in K} \mu(B_n)\). The main theorem provides a type of Hahn decomposition as follows. If \({\mathcal S}\) is a \(\sigma\)-semiring and \(\mu\) is a measure mapping \({\mathcal S}\) into \([-\infty,\infty)\) that has property \((*)\), then there is a countable partition of \(X\) consisting of sets \(\{P_n\}\) and \(\{N_n\}\) such that each \(P_n\) is a \(\mu\)-positive set and each \(N_n\) is a \(\mu\)-negative set. The decomposition is unique up to countable unions of \(\mu\)-null sets. The author also shows that \(\mu\) satisfies condition \((*)\) if and only if it can be expressed as a difference of two positive measures.