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18.102 - Introduction to Functional Analysis

18.102 Introduction to Functional Analysis (Spring 2021, MIT OCW). Instructor: Dr. Casey Rodriguez. Functional analysis helps us study and solve both linear and nonlinear problems posed on a normed space that is no longer finite-dimensional, a situation that arises very naturally in many concrete problems. For example, a nonrelativistic quantum particle confined to a region in space can be modeled using a complex valued function (a wave function), an infinite dimensional object (the function's value is required for each of the infinitely many points in the region). Functional analysis yields the mathematically and physically interesting fact that the (time independent) state of the particle can always be described as a (possibly infinite) superposition of elementary wave functions (bound states) that form a discrete set and can be ordered to have increasing energies tending to infinity. The fundamental topics from functional analysis covered in this course include normed spaces, completeness, functionals, the Hahn-Banach Theorem, duality, operators; Lebesgue measure, measurable functions, integrability, completeness of L^p spaces; Hilbert spaces; compact and self-adjoint operators; and the Spectral Theorem. (from ocw.mit.edu)

Instructor: Dr. Casey Rodriguez. Last time we discussed pre-Hilbert spaces (Hilbert spaces' little brothers), and now we define Hilbert spaces (what pre-Hilbert spaces really want to be). With the notion of an inner product, we define analogous linear algebra tools for functional analysis.

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