Function space

In mathematics, a function space is a set of functions of a given kind from a set X to a set Y. It is called a space because in many applications, it is a topological space or a vector space or both.

Examples

Function spaces appear in various areas of mathematics:

• in set theory, the power set of a set X may be identified with the set of all functions from X to {0,1};, denoted 2^X. More generally, the set of functions X → Y is denoted Y^X.

• in linear algebra the set of all linear transformations from a vector space V to another one, W, over the same field, is itself a vector space;

• in functional analysis the same is seen for continuous linear transformations, including topologies on the vector spaces in the above, and many of the major examples are function spaces carrying a topology; the best known examples include Hilbert spaces and Banach spaces.

• in functional analysis the set of all functions from the natural numbers to some set X is called a sequence space. It consists of the set of all possible sequences of elements of X.

• in topology, one may attempt to put a topology on the space of continuous functions from a topological space X to another one Y, with utility depending on the nature of the spaces. A commonly used example is the compact-open topology, e.g. loop space. Also available is the product topology on the space of set theoretic functions (i.e. not necessarily continuous functions) Y^X. In this context, this topology is also referred to as the topology of pointwise convergence.

• in algebraic topology, the study of homotopy theory is essentially that of discrete invariants of function spaces;

• in the theory of stochastic processes, the basic technical problem is how to construct a probability measure on a function space of paths of the process (functions of time);

• in category theory the function space is called an exponential object or map object. It appears in one way as the representation canonical bifunctor; but as (single) functor, of type [X, -], it appears as an adjoint functor to a functor of type (-×X) on objects;

• in lambda calculus and functional programming, function space types are used to express the idea of higher-order function.

• in domain theory, the basic idea is to find constructions from partial orders that can model lambda calculus, by creating a well-behaved cartesian closed category.

Functional analysis

The whole subject of functional analysis is organized around adequate techniques to bring function spaces as topological vector spaces within reach of the ideas that would apply to normed spaces of finite dimension.

• Schwartz space of smooth functions of rapid decrease and its dual, tempered distributions
• Lp space
• κ(R) continuous functions with compact support endowed with the uniform norm topology
• B(R) bounded continuous (Bounded function)
• C_∞(R) continuous functions which vanish at infinity
• C^r(R) continuous functions that have continuous first r derivatives.
• C^∞(R) Smooth functions
• C^∞_c smooth functions with compact support
• D(R) compact support in limit topology
• W^k,p Sobolev space
• O_U holomorphic functions
• linear functions
• piecewise linear functions
• continuous functions, compact open topology
• all functions, space of pointwise convergence
• Hardy space
• Hölder space
• Càdlàg functions, also known as the Skorokhod space

See also

• List of mathematical functions
• Linear algebra
• Vector space
• Banach space
• Hilbert space
• Clifford algebra
• Tensor field