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Banach spaces, function spaces, real functions, integral transforms, theory of distributions, measure theory.

30 votes

What is an intuitive view of adjoints? (version 2: functional analysis)

It seems like you're thinking about adjoints with respect to an inner product, but I find it more natural to think of adjoints as a way to get a map $B^{\ast} \to A^{\ast}$ from a map $A \to B$ and th …
Qiaochu Yuan's user avatar
0 votes

Galois cover via C star algebras

This is not an answer to the question, but regarding the discussion in the comments, commutative C*-algebras are not antiequivalent to locally compact Hausdorff spaces even if one restricts attention …
Qiaochu Yuan's user avatar
3 votes

Multivariate functions whose value is independent of the order of the arguments

I don't understand why you say that $f$ is continuous if its inputs are positive integers. Anyway, you can take any symmetric polynomial in the $g(r_i)$, e.g. $\sum_{i < j} g(r_i) g(r_j)$.
Qiaochu Yuan's user avatar
2 votes

What are some interesting ways of making new metrics out of old metrics?

This example can be found in Munkres (p. 133). If $X_i$ is a countable collection of metric spaces with metrics $d_i$, let $\bar{d_i} = \text{min}(d_i, 1)$ denote the standard bounded metric (which g …
Qiaochu Yuan's user avatar
11 votes
Accepted

What function has fourier series the harmonic series?

It's a standard series computation to show that $$ \sum_{n \ge 1} \frac{x^n}{n} = \log \frac{1}{1 - x} $$ Now substitute $x = e^{i t}$ and take the real part. (As an aside, the reason I write th …
Qiaochu Yuan's user avatar
7 votes
Accepted

Symmetric basis of harmonic homogeneous polynomials

Already the desired result is false for $n = 3, m = 2$, but for simpler reasons than I suggested in the comments. In this case the polynomials you give are $x^2 - 2y^2 + z^2, xy$ and their permutation …
Qiaochu Yuan's user avatar
20 votes
3 answers
4k views

What is the origin of the term "spectrum" in mathematics?

The use of the term "spectrum" to denote the prime ideals of a ring originates from the case that the ring is, say, $\mathbb{C}[T]$ where $T$ is a linear operator on a finite-dimensional vector space; …
Qiaochu Yuan's user avatar
4 votes
Accepted

What is the character that compactifies $\mathbb{R}$ through the Gelfand transform?

The Stone-Čech compactification of $\mathbb{R}$ is not its one-point compactification. The former is the largest compactification of a space, while the latter, if it exists, is the smallest compactifi …
Qiaochu Yuan's user avatar
6 votes

$\ell^1$ functor as left adjoint to unit ball functor

You want to take the category $\text{Ban}_1$ of Banach spaces and short maps (linear maps of operator norm $\le 1$). The unit ball functor $U : \text{Ban}_1 \to \text{Set}$ is represented by $\mathbb{ …
Qiaochu Yuan's user avatar
11 votes

Nice applications of the spectral theorem?

The spectral theorem in the finite-dimensional case is important in spectral graph theory: the adjacency matrix and Laplacian of an undirected graph are both symmetric, hence both have real eigenvalue …
Qiaochu Yuan's user avatar
2 votes

Is there a nice "synthetic" way for doing differential geometry on infinite dimensional vect...

Your first requirement suggests to me that you want to think of an infinite-dimensional vector space as an ind-object, namely the filtered colimit of its finite-dimensional subspaces. If so, one forma …
Qiaochu Yuan's user avatar
9 votes

Generalizations of "standard" calculus

I can answer your last question, at least. The derivative acts as a shift operator on Taylor series, so the operator $\frac{d}{dx} - 1$ acts as the forward difference on Taylor series. So their eige …
Qiaochu Yuan's user avatar
8 votes

What is the relationship amongst all the different kinds of spectra?

As far as I can tell, every example except the last is representation theory, understood in a suitably general sense. For example studying the eigenvalues of an operator is the same as studying the co …
15 votes
Accepted

Conceptually, what does unitization do?

Unitization and metric completion are both left adjoint functors, as are may other "-tion" operations in mathematics, such as localization or abelianization. Specifically, there is a forgetful functor …
Qiaochu Yuan's user avatar
15 votes

If $A$ is the ring of continuous functions on a genus $g$ surface, can the genus of $X$ be s...

I'll assume we're talking about complex functions; if real, tensor with $\mathbb{C}$. Now pass to the group of units. With the topology given by spectral radius (this is an algebraic description of th …
Qiaochu Yuan's user avatar

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