The optimal form of selection principles for functions of a real variable (Q2568202)

The author proposes a unified approach to different results connected with the Helly selection principle for sequences of functions of uniformly bounded variation. Let \(T\) be a subset of the real line, \((X,d)\) a metric space, and \(f:T\to X\) a function. For a positive integer \(n\) we define \(\nu (n,f)=\sup\sum_{i=1}^n d(f(b_i),f(a_i))\), where the supremum is taken over all numbers \(a_1\leq b_1\leq a_2\leq b_2\leq \dots\leq a_n\leq b_n\) from \(T\). The sequence \((\nu (n,f))\) is called the modulus of variation of \(f\) in the sense of Chanturiya. The main result of the paper is the folowing theorem: If the sequence \((f_j)\) of functions \(f_j:T\to X\) is pointwise precompact and \(\lim\sup_{j\rightarrow \infty} \nu (n,f_j)=o(n)\), then there exists a subsequence of \((f_j)\) which is pointwise convergent to a function \(f\) satisfying \(\nu (n,f)=o(n)\). The author shows that this theorem implies known pointwise selection results, including Helly's theorem, and provides interesting examples. The paper is concluded with some variants of the main result for almost everywhere convergence and weak convergence in a reflexive separable Banach space.