Hilbert & Banach Space

2 min read Last updated Sat Jun 27 2026 08:46:52 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time)

A metric space is complete iff every Cauchy sequence in the space converges to a limit within the space.

Banach Space

A complete normed vector space.

Formally, a normed space (X,)(X, \|\cdot\|) is a Banach space iff every Cauchy sequence in XX converges in XX.

Examples:

  • Rn\mathbb{R}^n with the Euclidean norm
  • p\ell^p spaces for 1p1 \le p \le \infty: sequences (x1,x2,)(x_1, x_2, \ldots) with xip<\sum |x_i|^p < \infty
  • Lp([a,b])L^p([a,b]): functions on [a,b][a,b] with finite pp-norm

Hilbert Space

A complete inner product space. Every Hilbert space is a Banach space (the inner product induces a norm), but not every Banach space is a Hilbert space.

A norm \|\cdot\| comes from an inner product iff it satisfies the parallelogram law:

x+y2+xy2=2(x2+y2)\|x + y\|^2 + \|x - y\|^2 = 2(\|x\|^2 + \|y\|^2)

Examples:

  • Rn\mathbb{R}^n with the dot product
  • L2([a,b])L^2([a,b]): square-integrable functions with inner product f,g=abf(x)g(x)dx\langle f, g \rangle = \int_a^b f(x)\overline{g(x)}\,\text{d}x
  • 2\ell^2: square-summable sequences with inner product x,y=xiyi\langle x, y \rangle = \sum x_i \overline{y_i}

Relation

Hilbert SpaceBanach SpaceNormed SpaceMetric Space\text{Hilbert Space} \subset \text{Banach Space} \subset \text{Normed Space} \subset \text{Metric Space}
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