Topological Vector Spaces

Abstract

This chapter presents the most basic results on topological vector spaces. With the exception of the last section, the scalar field over which vector spaces are defined can be an arbitrary, non-discrete valuated field K; K is endowed with the uniformity derived from its absolute value. The purpose of this generality is to clearly identify those properties of the commonly used real and complex number field that are essential for these basic results. Section 1 discusses the description of vector space topologies in terms of neighborhood bases of 0, and the uniformity associated with such a topology. Section 2 gives some means for constructing new topological vector spaces from given ones. The standard tools used in working with spaces of finite dimension are collected in Section 3, which is followed by a brief discussion of affine subspaces and hyperplanes (Section 4). Section 5 studies the extremely important notion of boundedness. Metrizability is treated in Section 6. This notion, although not overly important for the general theory, deserves special attention for several reasons; among them are its connection with category, its role in applications in analysis, and its role in the history of the subject (cf. Banach [1]). Restricting K to subfields of the complex numbers, Section 7 discusses the transition from real to complex fields and vice versa.