In functional analysis, the type and cotype of a Banach space are a classification of Banach spaces through probability theory and a measure for how far a Banach space is away from being a Hilbert space. The starting point is the Pythagorean identity for orthogonal vectors ( e k ) k = 1 n {\displaystyle (e_{k})_{k=1}^{n}} in Hilbert spaces
‖ ∑ k = 1 n e k ‖ 2 = ∑ k = 1 n ‖ e k ‖ 2 . {\displaystyle \left\|\sum _{k=1}^{n}e_{k}\right\|^{2}=\sum _{k=1}^{n}\left\|e_{k}\right\|^{2}.}
This identity no longer holds in general Banach spaces; however, one can introduce a notion of orthogonality probabilistically with the help of Rademacher random variables, for this reason one also speaks of Rademacher type and Rademacher cotype. The notion of type and cotype was introduced by French mathematician Jean-Pierre Kahane.
Definition Let
( X , ‖ ⋅ ‖ ) {\displaystyle (X,\|\cdot \|)} be a Banach space,
( ε i ) {\displaystyle (\varepsilon _{i})} be a sequence of independent Rademacher random variables, i.e. P ( ε i = − 1 ) = P ( ε i = 1 ) = 1 / 2 {\displaystyle P(\varepsilon _{i}=-1)=P(\varepsilon _{i}=1)=1/2} and E [ ε i ε m ] = 0 {\displaystyle \mathbb {E} [\varepsilon _{i}\varepsilon _{m}]=0} for i ≠ m {\displaystyle i\neq m} and Var [ ε i ] = 1 {\displaystyle \operatorname {Var} [\varepsilon _{i}]=1} . The notation E ε {\displaystyle \mathbb {E} _{\varepsilon }} means that we integrate with respect to the variable ε {\displaystyle \varepsilon } .
Type
X {\displaystyle X} is of type p {\displaystyle p} for p ∈ [ 1 , 2 ] {\displaystyle p\in [1,2]} if there exists a finite constant C ≥ 1 {\displaystyle C\geq 1} such that
E ε [ ‖ ∑ i = 1 n ε i x i ‖ p ] ≤ C p ( ∑ i = 1 n ‖ x i ‖ p ) {\displaystyle \mathbb {E} _{\varepsilon }\left[\left\|\sum \limits _{i=1}^{n}\varepsilon _{i}x_{i}\right\|^{p}\right]\leq C^{p}\left(\sum \limits _{i=1}^{n}\|x_{i}\|^{p}\right)}
for all finite sequences ( x i ) i = 1 n ∈ X n {\displaystyle (x_{i})_{i=1}^{n}\in X^{n}} . The sharpest constant C {\displaystyle C} is called type p {\displaystyle p} constant and denoted as T p ( X ) {\displaystyle T_{p}(X)} .
Cotype
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