James's theorem

In mathematics, particularly functional analysis, James' theorem, named for Robert C. James, states that a Banach space $X$ is reflexive if and only if every continuous linear functional's norm on $X$ attains its supremum on the closed unit ball in $X.$

A stronger version of the theorem states that a weakly closed subset $C$ of a Banach space $X$ is weakly compact if and only if the dual norm each continuous linear functional on $X$ attains a maximum on $C.$

The hypothesis of completeness in the theorem cannot be dropped.^[1]

Statements[edit]

The space $X$ considered can be a real or complex Banach space. Its continuous dual space is denoted by $X^{\prime }.$ The topological dual of $\mathbb {R}$ -Banach space deduced from $X$ by any restriction scalar will be denoted $X_{\mathbb {R} }^{\prime }.$ (It is of interest only if $X$ is a complex space because if $X$ is a $\mathbb {R}$ -space then $X_{\mathbb {R} }^{\prime }=X^{\prime }.$ )

James compactness criterion — Let $X$ be a Banach space and $A$ a weakly closed nonempty subset of $X.$ The following conditions are equivalent:

$A$ is weakly compact.
For every $f\in X^{\prime },$ there exists an element $a_{0}\in A$ such that $\left|f\left(a_{0}\right)\right|=\sup _{a\in A}|f(a)|.$
For any $f\in X_{\mathbb {R} }^{\prime },$ there exists an element $a_{0}\in A$ such that $f\left(a_{0}\right)=\sup _{a\in A}|f(a)|.$
For any $f\in X_{\mathbb {R} }^{\prime },$ there exists an element $a_{0}\in A$ such that $f\left(a_{0}\right)=\sup _{a\in A}f(a).$

A Banach space being reflexive if and only if its closed unit ball is weakly compact one deduces from this, since the norm of a continuous linear form is the upper bound of its modulus on this ball:

James' theorem — A Banach space $X$ is reflexive if and only if for all $f\in X^{\prime },$ there exists an element $a\in X$ of norm $\|a\|\leq 1$ such that $f(a)=\|f\|.$

History[edit]

Historically, these sentences were proved in reverse order. In 1957, James had proved the reflexivity criterion for separable Banach spaces^[2] and 1964 for general Banach spaces.^[3] Since the reflexivity is equivalent to the weak compactness of the unit sphere, Victor L. Klee reformulated this as a compactness criterion for the unit sphere in 1962 and assumes that this criterion characterizes any weakly compact quantities.^[4] This was then actually proved by James in 1964.^[5]

References[edit]

James, Robert C. (1957), "Reflexivity and the supremum of linear functionals", Annals of Mathematics, 66 (1): 159–169, doi:10.2307/1970122, JSTOR 1970122, MR 0090019
Klee, Victor (1962), "A conjecture on weak compactness", Transactions of the American Mathematical Society, 104 (3): 398–402, doi:10.1090/S0002-9947-1962-0139918-7, MR 0139918.
James, Robert C. (1964), "Weakly compact sets", Transactions of the American Mathematical Society, 113 (1): 129–140, doi:10.2307/1994094, JSTOR 1994094, MR 0165344.
James, Robert C. (1971), "A counterexample for a sup theorem in normed space", Israel Journal of Mathematics, 9 (4): 511–512, doi:10.1007/BF02771466, MR 0279565.
James, Robert C. (1972), "Reflexivity and the sup of linear functionals", Israel Journal of Mathematics, 13 (3–4): 289–300, doi:10.1007/BF02762803, MR 0338742.
Megginson, Robert E. (1998), An introduction to Banach space theory, Graduate Texts in Mathematics, vol. 183, Springer-Verlag, ISBN 0-387-98431-3

[1] James (1971)

[2] James (1957)

[3] James (1964)

[4] Klee (1962)

[5] James (1964)

[1]

[2]

[3]

[4]

[5]

v t e Banach space topics
Types of Banach spaces	Asplund Banach list Banach lattice Grothendieck Hilbert Inner product space Polarization identity (Polynomially) Reflexive Riesz L-semi-inner product (B Strictly Uniformly) convex Uniformly smooth (Injective Projective) Tensor product (of Hilbert spaces)
Banach spaces are:	Barrelled Complete F-space Fréchet tame Locally convex Seminorms/Minkowski functionals Mackey Metrizable Normed norm Quasinormed Stereotype
Function space Topologies	Banach–Mazur compactum Dual Dual space Dual norm Operator Ultraweak Weak polar operator Strong polar operator Ultrastrong Uniform convergence
Linear operators	Adjoint Bilinear form operator sesquilinear (Un)Bounded Closed Compact on Hilbert spaces (Dis)Continuous Densely defined Fredholm kernel operator Hilbert–Schmidt Functionals positive Pseudo-monotone Normal Nuclear Self-adjoint Strictly singular Trace class Transpose Unitary
Operator theory	Banach algebras C-algebras Operator space Spectrum C-algebra radius Spectral theory of ODEs Spectral theorem Polar decomposition Singular value decomposition
Theorems	Anderson–Kadec Banach–Alaoglu Banach–Mazur Banach–Saks Banach–Schauder (open mapping) Banach–Steinhaus (Uniform boundedness) Bessel's inequality Cauchy–Schwarz inequality Closed graph Closed range Eberlein–Šmulian Freudenthal spectral Gelfand–Mazur Gelfand–Naimark Goldstine Hahn–Banach hyperplane separation Kakutani fixed-point Krein–Milman Lomonosov's invariant subspace Mackey–Arens Mazur's lemma M. Riesz extension Parseval's identity Riesz's lemma Riesz representation Robinson-Ursescu Schauder fixed-point
Analysis	Abstract Wiener space Banach manifold bundle Bochner space Convex series Differentiation in Fréchet spaces Derivatives Fréchet Gateaux functional holomorphic quasi Integrals Bochner Dunford Gelfand–Pettis regulated Paley–Wiener weak Functional calculus Borel continuous holomorphic Measures Lebesgue Projection-valued Vector Weakly / Strongly measurable function
Types of sets	Absolutely convex Absorbing Affine Balanced/Circled Bounded Convex Convex cone (subset) Convex series related ((cs, lcs)-closed, (cs, bcs)-complete, (lower) ideally convex, (Hx), and (Hwx)) Linear cone (subset) Radial Radially convex/Star-shaped Symmetric Zonotope
Subsets / set operations	Affine hull (Relative) Algebraic interior (core) Bounding points Convex hull Extreme point Interior Linear span Minkowski addition Polar (Quasi) Relative interior
Examples	Absolute continuity AC $ba(\Sigma )$ c space Banach coordinate BK Besov $B_{p,q}^{s}(\mathbb {R} )$ Birnbaum–Orlicz Bounded variation BV Bs space Continuous C(K) with K compact Hausdorff Hardy H^p Hilbert H Morrey–Campanato $L^{\lambda ,p}(\Omega )$ ℓ^p $\ell ^{\infty }$ L^p $L^{\infty }$ weighted Schwartz $S\left(\mathbb {R} ^{n}\right)$ Segal–Bargmann F Sequence space Sobolev W^k,p Sobolev inequality Triebel–Lizorkin Wiener amalgam $W(X,L^{p})$
Applications	Differential operator Finite element method Mathematical formulation of quantum mechanics Ordinary Differential Equations (ODEs) Validated numerics

Statements[edit]

History[edit]

See also[edit]

Notes[edit]

References[edit]