Compact operators on Banach spaces

Abstract

In this note I prove several things about compact linear operators from one Banach space to another, especially from a Banach space to itself. Some of these may things be simpler to prove for compact operators on a Hilbert space, but since often in analysis we deal with compact operators from one Banach space to another, such as from a Sobolev space to an L space, and since the proofs here are not absurdly long, I think it’s worth the extra time to prove all of this for Banach spaces. The proofs that I give are completely detailed, and one should be able to read them without using a pencil and paper. When I want to use a fact that is not obvious but that I do not wish to prove, I give a precise statement of it, and I verify that its hypotheses are satisfied.