Ultraproducts and metastability (Q2439656)

Convergence theorems in analysis are disappointingly non-uniform because in many cases the guaranteed convergence can be arbitrarily slow. In this paper the authors show that even in such cases, a model-theoretic compactness argument can often be used to establish the existence of uniform bounds on what they call the rate of meta-stable convergence. All that is required is that the class of structures involved and the hypothesis of the theorem are preserved under a certain model-theoretic ultraproduct construction. The results are illustrated by three examples from ergodic theory. Next, we give a brief description of one of the examples. Given a power-bounded operator \(T\) acting on a reflexive Banach space \(X\), it is well known that the sequence of averages \((A_n x)\), where \(A_n x:= n^{-1}\sum_{k=0}^{n-1} T^k x\), converges for every \(x\in X\). There is no uniform bound on the rate of convergence, but we can prove the following result: Let \(\mathcal{C}\) be a class of Banach spaces such that the ultraproduct of a countable collection of elements of \(\mathcal{C}\) is reflexive (e.g., \(\mathcal{C}\) the class of uniformly convex Banach spaces). Then, given \(\rho>0\), \(M>0\) and a function \(F:\mathbb{N}\rightarrow\mathbb{N}\), there exists \(K\in \mathbb{N}\) such that for every operator \(T\) acting on a space \(X\) in the class \(\mathcal{C}\) and satisfying \(\|T^k\|\leq M\) for all \(k\in\mathbb{N}\), every \(x\in X\) and every \(\varepsilon>0\), if \(\|x\|\leq \rho\varepsilon\), then there exists \(n\leq K\) such that \(\|A_kx-A_lx\|<\varepsilon\) for all \(k,l\) in the interval \([n,F(n)]\).