## Thursday, September 11, 2014

### Mathbox update: Ostrowski's theorem

Hello all,

This update has two main foci: the rounding off of the integration theorems with the integration by parts and integration by substitution formulas, and an unrelated work to formalize the concept of an absolute value over a ring (in the algebra sense) and prove Ostrowski's theorem. I dare say that the real analysis section is finally "open for business" now that most of the workhorse theorems are now available for use. On to the list:
• suplub2, suprleub, infmxrgelb, ...: All of the supremum theorems of the form $\forall x \in A: x\le B\to\sup A\le B$ or $B<\sup A\to\exists x \in A: B<x$ have now been made bidirectional. I find this interesting, because it means that one can characterize "less than supremum" exactly in terms of a conjunction of individual inequalities. Another way to think about it is to consider the sets $(-\infty,x)$ for $x\in\Bbb R$. These are open sets, so any union of them is also open; moreover, they are all convex and unbounded below, and it's not hard to see that such sets are also closed under unions. Thus any nonempty union $\bigcup_{x\in A}(-\infty,x)$ is an open, convex, unbounded-below set, and the only such sets on the reals are those of the form $(\infty,x)$ or $(-\infty,\infty)$, since $\Bbb R$ is complete. If $A$ is bounded above, then the last case is not possible, and so we can define $\sup A$ as the upper endpoint of the union: $\bigcup_{x\in A}(-\infty,x)=(-\infty,\sup A)$.

Note that a similar characterization with less-or-equal is not possible, because the infinite union of closed intervals is not necessarily closed.
• limsupval, etc.: The definition of the limit supremum already existed, but there were no theorems for working with it beyond the bare minimum. I added the basics, with the most nontrivial theorems being limsupval2 (the limsup is not affected by any finite prefix) and limsupgre (if a sequence of real numbers has a bounded limit supremum, then the quantities $\sup_{n>k}f(n)$ appearing in the definition of the limsup are all bounded as well).
• caurcvg: The original proof showed that if $f$ is a Cauchy sequence, then it converges to the supremum of the set $\{x:\exists j\forall k\ge j:x<f(k)\}$. Since this set is so similar to the limit supremum set, I modified the proof to show that it converges to the limit supremum instead (which then yields the corollary that any convergent sequence converges to the limit supremum of the sequence).
• pcqmul, pczdvds, pcid: generalize some proofs about the prime count function from integers to rational numbers
• pcadd: To show that $p^{-\#_p(r)}$ is an ultrametric absolute value on the rational numbers, you need two main facts about the prime count function $\#_p(r)$ (which is defined so that $p^{\#_p(r)}$ is the highest power of $p$ that divides the integer or rational number $r$): the multiplicative property pcqmul ($\#_p(ab)=\#_p(a)\#_p(b)$), and this theorem, which says that $\#_p(a+b)\ge \min(\#_p(a),\#_p(b))$. When you exponentiate both sides, this gives $p^{-\#_p(a+b)}\le\max(p^{-\#_p(a)},p^{-\#_p(b)})$, which is the ultrametric inequality. The proof is not as easy as you might think.
• df-abv: Given a ring $R$, an absolute value on $R$ is a function $f:R\to\Bbb R$ such that for all $x,y\in R$:
• $f(x)\ge 0$
• $f(x)=0\iff x=0_R$
• $f(x\cdot_R y)=f(x)f(y)$
• $f(x+_R y)\le f(x)+f(y)$
This definition is of course inspired by the standard absolute value function $|x|$ on $\Bbb C$; and all except the third axiom are very reminiscent of the analogous axioms for a metric. (Below I will denote an absolute value using the $|x|$ notation as is customary.) Other interesting simple properties of absolute values include $|0|=0$, $|1|=1$ (unless $1=0$), $\left|-x\right|=|x|$, and $|x/y|=|x|/|y|$.
• abvdom: If $R$ is a ring with an absolute value, then $R$ is actually a domain, which is to say, $xy=0$ implies $x=0\vee y=0$.
• abvtriv: As a converse to abvdom, if $R$ is a domain, then it has an absolute value, namely the trivial absolute value defined by $|x|=0$ if $x=0$ and $|x|=1$ otherwise. (Since we don't have a good notation for domain, we strengthen the hypotheses to say that $R$ is a division ring instead. However, this theorem now provides the alternative notation ${\rm AbsVal}(R)\ne\emptyset$ in order to specify that $R$ is a non-commutative domain.)
• cncfmpt1f, cncfmpt2f: These theorems are the analogues of cnmpt11f and cnmpt12f, respectively, specialized to continuous functions on the complex numbers (rather than continuous functions in arbitrary topological spaces). We still need the topological continuity predicate for the two-arg version, though, because the version on $\Bbb C$ is designed only for functions $f:\Bbb C\to\Bbb C$ in one variable, which misses the common use-case $h(x)=R(f(x),g(x))$ where $R:\Bbb C\times\Bbb C\to\Bbb C$ is continuous in the product topology on $\Bbb C\times\Bbb C$ (particularly when $R$ is one of $+,\cdot,-$).
• mbfsub: The difference of two measurable functions is measurable.
• mbfsup, mbfinf, mbflimsup, mbflim: The supremum, infimum, limit supremum, and limit of a sequence of measurable functions is measurable. The main reason for developing limsup in the first place is because it allows a limit to be written in terms of a supremum and infimum, which are the basic measurability-preserving operations we have to work with.
• mbfi1flim: A real measurable function is the pointwise limit of a sequence of simple functions. (The restriction to real functions is only because in our definition simple functions have to be real, so that they can be compared.)
• mbfmul: The pointwise product of two measurable functions is measurable. The proof is very general; you just take two sequences of simple functions converging to $f$ and $g$ and multiply them pointwise to get a sequence of simple functions that converges to $fg$; then $fg$ is a limit of simple functions and so is measurable. I think it could easily be adapted to show that $h(f(x),g(x))$ is a measurable function whenever $h$ is jointly continuous and $f,g$ are measurable.
• bddmulibl, bddibl: A bounded function is integrable, and a bounded function times an integrable function is also integrable. (This also yields a shorter proof for cniccibl.)
• dvcn: A function differentiable on its entire domain is continuous.
• ftc2ditg: Restate ftc2 for directed integrals, so that we can drop the ordering of the endpoints.
• itgparts: Integration by parts. If $A:[x,y]\to\Bbb C$ and $C:[x,y]\to\Bbb C$ are continuous functions, $A':(x,y)\to\Bbb C$ and $C':(x,y)\to\Bbb C$ are defined and continuous (so $A,C$ are differentiable on $(x,y)$), and $A\cdot C'$ and $A'\cdot C$ are integrable on $[x,y]$, then $$\int_x^yA(t)C'(t)\,dt=(A(y)C(y)-A(x)C(x))-\int_x^yA'(t)C(t)\,dt.$$
• itgsubst: Integration by $u$-substitution. If $I$ is an open interval, $A:[x,y]\to I$ and $C:I\to\Bbb C$ are continuous functions, and $A':(x,y)\to\Bbb R$ is continuous and integrable, then $$\int_{A(x)}^{A(y)}C(u)\,du=\int_x^yC(A(t))A'(t)\,dt.$$ When I was learning these theorems in school, I don't remember there being so many assumptions, but it just goes to show that it's easy to drop details in a regular math class if you're not being careful. These theorems are not as general as they could be, but usually making the hypotheses more general also means making them more complicated, and I don't want to go too far in that direction. (I certainly don't want to define absolute continuity, which has little use outside these theorems and the FTC.)
• cxpaddle: A tricky proof that $(a+b)^c\le a^c+b^c$ when $0<c\le1$.
• abvcxp: We're back to the absolute value after that integration interlude because this list is in database order and we had to wait for the logarithm and complex power functions to be defined. This theorem shows that if $|x|$ is an absolute value on $R$, then $|x|^c$ is as well, when $0<c\le 1$. For $c>1$, it usually is not because the triangle inequality is broken. (I have seen an alternative definition of absolute value with an auxiliary parameter, the "order" $c$ of the absolute value, such that for all $a,b$, $|a+b|\le c\max(|a|,|b|)$; then $|x|$ is a "triangular" absolute value iff $c\le 2$ and $|x|$ is an ultrametric absolute value iff $c=1$. Under this setup, if $|x|$ is an absolute value of order $n$, then $|x|^c$ is an absolute value of order $n^c$.)
• abvmet: I mentioned earlier that the axioms of an absolute value look a lot like the axioms of a metric; well, here we show the correspondence, where an absolute value $|x|$ induces a metric $d(x,y)=|x-y|$. In fact, in the proof we never use the third property abvmul; and if we drop that (and add $\left|-x\right|=|x|$ as an axiom, since this is no longer derivable) then there is no need to even have the multiplication operation, so we end up with a statement about pure groups. I don't even think they need to be abelian groups, since we never use that either.
• qrng and related theorems: Define the ring $\langle \Bbb Q,+,\cdot\rangle$, and show that it is actually a division ring, and the operations $+,\cdot,0,1,-,/$ map to their ring operation equivalents.
• qabvle: From here on, we are interested in absolute values on the ring of rational numbers. For brevity and unambiguity, I will denote the "traditional" absolute value function by $|x|_\infty$, and reserve $|x|$ for any absolute value under our new definition. Induct the triangle inequality to show that $|n|\le n$ for all $n\in\Bbb N_0$.
• ostthlem2: Any two absolute values that agree on the primes are equal.
• qabsabv: The regular absolute value $|x|_\infty$ is an absolute value on $\Bbb Q$.
• padicabv, padicabvf, padicabvcxp: The $p$-adic absolute value $|x|=n^{\#_p(x)}$ is an absolute value whenever $0<n<1$. We define "the" $p$-adic absolute value $|x|_p$ by setting $n=p^{-1}$; other choices of $n$ yield equivalent (off by an exponent) absolute values.
• ostth: Ostrowski's theorem. If $|x|$ is an absolute value, then (1) $|x|=|x|_0$ is trivial, that is, $|x|=1$ for all $x\ne0$; (2) $|x|=|x|_\infty^c$ for some $c\in(0,1]$, i.e. $|x|$ is "regular"; or (3) there is a prime $p$ such that $|x|=|x|_p^c$ for some $c\in(0,\infty)$, i.e. $|x|$ is equivalent to a $p$-adic absolute value. We separate the proof into three parts according to these cases. If there is some $n\in\Bbb N$ with $|n|>1$ then we are in case (2), otherwise if there is a prime $|p|$ such that $|p|<1$ then we are in case (3). If both of these are false then $|p|=1$ for each prime, so case (1) shows that $|x|=|x|_0$ is the trivial absolute value.
I will probably write a post later going into a bit more detail for this proof, which is quite involved. It's a shame it's not on the metamath 100 list - I think it's a pretty nice and notable theorem.