Fundamentals of functional analysis (Q310884)

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Fundamentals of functional analysis
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    Fundamentals of functional analysis (English)
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    8 September 2016
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    This book aims to cover an introduction to topology, measure theory, Banach spaces and operator theory including \(C^*\)-algebras and von Neumann algebras in just a little over 400 pages. The goal is to allow students to ``begin studying the rich subject of functional analysis with fewer pre-requisites than is normally required''. The reader is only assumed to have knowledge of basic real and complex analysis, a bit of algebra, and linear algebra. The price to pay for keeping the book short is, of course, that there is no room for historical notes or motivation. The exception to the rule is the short appendix to Chapter~4 comparing the Riemann and Lebesgue integrals. The first seventy pages of the book are dedicated to an introduction to topology. It covers metric topologies, subspaces and products, continuous functions, weak topologies, quotients and compactness, among other things. This section also includes the Baire category theorem on which three of the fundamental results on operators in Banach spaces are based. The second part of the book introduces measures leading to the Hahn and the Jordan decomposition of measures. Then integration and the dominated convergence theorem follow as well as the fundamental theorem of calculus; it ends with the inequalities of Jensen, Hölder and Minkowski. Part three is one hundred pages of Banach spaces. The focus is on the classical Banach spaces \(c_0\), \(C(X)\) for \(X\) compact Hausdorff, and \(\ell_p\) and \(L_p\), \(1 \leq p \leq \infty\), but Hilbert spaces get the majority of the attention. Chapter~6 looks at dual spaces, and then we are finally in the land of functional analysis with the Hahn-Banach extension theorem, Banach-Alaoglu and the Riesz representation theorem. In the chapter on convexity we visit the Hahn-Banach separation theorem and the Krein-Milman theorem. The final and longest part of the book deals with operator theory. We get the three great theorems, the open mapping theorem, the closed graph theorem and the uniform boundedness principle, before diving into compact operators and then into Banach algebras. The section on spectra is nice with detailed examples of compact operators and multiplication operators. There is a whole chapter on the spectral theory of Banach algebras, and one on operators on Hilbert spaces, followed by the final chapter on \(C^*\)-algebras. The book ends with a definition~(!) -- of the hyperfinite \(II_1\) factor. All of the eleven chapters come with a rich supply of exercises. Most of the proofs in the book are given in detail, but a few are left as exercises. For someone used to standard Banach space notation, where \(X\) usually denotes Banach spaces, it is a bit confusing to see ``\(X \subset V^*\) is the closed unit ball of \(V^*\)''. But overall, the book is well-written and easy to read with very few misprints in the first part. The only major misprint in the first 300 pages is the mix-up of the definitions of \(\|\cdot\|_\infty\) and \(\|\cdot\|_1\) norms on page 167. Subsequently, alas, it looks like the proof-reader forgot about the last 100 pages of the book. There one will stumble upon several typos and even a repeated definition of primitive and prime ideals (Definitions~11.83 and 11.91).
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    topology
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    measure theory
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    Banach spaces
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    operator theory
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    Hahn-Banach theorem
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    spectral theory
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    von Neumann algebras
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    \(C^*\)-algebras
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