Bases

Abstract

Bases play a prominent role in the analysis of vector spaces, as well in the finite-dimensional as in the infinite-dimensional case. The idea is the same in both cases, namely to consider a family of elements such that all vectors in the considered space can be expressed in a unique way as a linear combination of these elements. In the infinite-dimensional case the situation is complicated: we are forced to work with infinite series, and different concepts of a basis are possible, depending on how we want the series to converge. For example, are we asking for the series to converge with respect to a fixed order of the elements (conditional convergence) or do we want it to converge regardless of how the elements are ordered (unconditional convergence)? We define the relevant types of bases in general Banach spaces in Section 3.1, but besides this we mainly consider Hilbert spaces. In Section 3.4 we discuss the most important properties of orthonormal bases in Hilbert spaces; we expect the reader to have some basic knowledge about this subject. A slight (but useful) modification leads to the definition of Riesz bases, which are treated in detail in Section 3.6. Orthonormal bases and Riesz bases satisfy the so-called Bessel inequality, which is the key to the observation that they deliver unconditionally convergent expansions and can be ordered in an arbitrary way. Sequences satisfying the Bessel inequality are therefore discussed already in Section 3.2.