Abstract
We present a construction of algebras of generalized functions of Colombeau-type which, instead of asymptotic estimates with respect to a regularization parameter, employs only topological estimates on certain spaces of kernels for its definition.
Keywords: Nonlinear generalized functions, Colombeau algebras, Asymptotic estimates, Elementary Colombeau algebra, Diffeomorphism invariance
Introduction
Colombeau algebras, as introduced by Colombeau [1, 2], today represent the most widely studied approach to embedding the space of Schwartz distributions into an algebra of generalized functions such that the product of smooth functions as well as partial derivatives of distributions are preserved. These algebras have found numerous applications in situations involving singular objects, differentiation and nonlinear operations (see, e.g., [9, 12, 15]).
All constructions of Colombeau algebras so far incorporate certain asymptotic estimates for the definition of the spaces of moderate and negligible functions, the quotient of which constitutes the algebra. There is a certain degree of freedom in the asymptotic scale employed for these estimates; while commonly a polynomial scale is used, generalizations in several directions are possible. For an overview we refer to works on asymptotic scales [3, 7], -algebras [5], sequence spaces with exponent weights [6] and asymptotic gauges [8].
In this article we will present an algebra of generalized functions which instead of asymptotic estimates employs only topological estimates on certain spaces of kernels for its definition. This is a direct generalization of the usual seminorm estimates valid for distributions.
We will first develop the most general setting in the local scalar case, namely that of diffeomorphism invariant full Colombeau algebras. We will then derive a simpler variant, similar to Colombeau’s elementary algebra. Finally, we give canonical mappings into the most important Colombeau algebras, which points to a certain universality of the construction offered here.
Preliminaries
and denote the sets of positive and non-negative integers, respectively, and the set of nonnegative real numbers. Concerning distribution theory we use the notation and terminology of L. Schwartz [18].
Given any subsets (with ) the relation means that K is compact and contained in the interior of L.
Let be open. is the space of complex-valued smooth functions on . For any , and any bounded subset we set
Note that , and are continuous seminorms on the respective spaces.
We define by for , where is the delta distribution at x.
is the space of test functions on with support in L. For two locally convex spaces E and F, denotes the space of linear continuous mappings from E to F, endowed with the topology of bounded convergence. By we denote the filter base of open neighborhoods of a point x in , and by the filter base of open neighborhoods of K. By we denote the set of continuous seminorms of a locally convex space E. is the open Euclidean ball of radius at , and for any subset we define .
Our notion of smooth functions between arbitrary locally convex spaces is that of convenient calculus [11]. In particular, denotes the k-th differential of a smooth mapping f.
Construction of the algebra
Throughout this section let be a fixed open set. Let be the category of locally convex spaces with smooth mappings in the sense of convenient calculus as morphisms.
Definition 1
Consider and as sheaves with values in . We define the basic space of nonlinear generalized functions on to be the set of sheaf homomorphisms
Hence, an element of is given by a family of mappings
satisfying for all open subsets and . We will casually write R in place of .
Remark 2
The basic space can be identified with the set of all mappings such that for any open subset and the equality implies (cf. [10]).
is a -module with multiplication
for , , open and . Moreover, it is an associative commutative algebra with product .
A distribution defines a sheaf morphism from to . In fact, for open and the function is an element of (see [18, Chap. IV, §1, Th. II, p. 105] or [20, Theorem 40.2, p. 416]). More abstractly, this can be seen using the theory of topological tensor products [16, 17, 20] as follows:
where denotes the completed projective tensor product of and . The assignment is smooth, being linear and continuous [11, 1.3, p. 9]. Hence, we have the following embeddings of distributions and smooth functions into :
Definition 3
We define and by
for with open and .
Clearly is linear and is an algebra homomorphism. Directional derivatives on then are defined as follows:
Definition 4
Let be a smooth vector field and . We define derivatives and by
for with open, where we set
Here, is the directional derivative of at x in direction X(x) and is the Lie derivative of considered as a differential form, given by .
Note that both and satisfy the Leibniz rule. We have
While is -linear in X, is only -linear in X. We refer to [13, 14] for a discussion of the role of these derivatives in differential geometry.
Definition 5
For we set
More explicitly, is the commutative semiring of polynomials in the commuting variables with coefficients in . Similarly, is the commutative semiring in the commuting variables with coefficients in and such that, if is given by the finite sum
then for all . Note that is a subsemiring of and a subsemiring of . Furthermore, is an ideal in if is considered as a subsemiring of . Given and for we have . For we write if for all , and similarly for .
We can now formulate the following definitions of moderateness and negligibility, not involving any asymptotic estimates:
Definition 6
An element is called moderate if
The subset of all moderate elements of is denoted by .
Definition 7
An element is called negligible if
The subset of all negligible elements of is denoted by .
It is worthwile to discuss possible simplifications of these definitions, which at this stage should be considered more as a proof of concept than as the definite form they should have. First, we note that we cannot replace by . In fact, in the second case K and L can be distant from each other, while in the first case it suffices to control the situation where K and L are close to each other. However, the following result shows that we can always assume and that the are given merely on an arbitrary open neighborhood of K, i.e., as elements of the direct limit :
Proposition 8
Let . Then R is moderate if and only if
Similarly, R is negligible if and only if
Proof
Obviously each of these conditions is weaker than the corresponding one of Definition 6 or Definition 7.
Suppose we are given such that the condition stated for moderateness holds. Given there hence exists some . Now given arbitrary we choose a set such that . Fixing for the moderateness test, for we hence obtain and . Now fix some ; each of those represents an element of , whence we have the estimate
where the last equality follows because the take values in . This shows that R is moderate.
For the case of negligibility we proceed similarly until we obtain , and . Let be such that on a neighborhood of and set , which is bounded. For any we then obtain
which proves negligibility of R.
If the test of Definition 6, Definition 7 or Definition 8 holds on some U then clearly it also holds on any open subset of U. The following characterization of moderateness and negligiblity is obtained by applying polarization identities to the differentials of R:
Lemma 9
Let .
-
(i)R is moderate if and only if
-
(ii)R is negligible if and only if
Proof
We assume , as for the statements are identical. (i) “”: One obtains such that
with given by .
“”: One obtains . We then use the polarization identity [19, eq. (7), p. 471]
where and we have set .
Hence,
with given by
(ii) “”: We have such that
with given by
“”: We obtain such that, as above,
with given by
Note that the polarization identities could be applied also in the formulation of Proposition 8.
Proposition 10
.
Proof
Let and fix for the moderateness test. By negligibility of R there exists as in Definition 7. Let and be arbitrary. Then there exist and B such that the estimate of Definition 7 holds. We know that is given by a finite sum
It suffices to show that there are such that for any we have the estimates
| 1 |
| 2 |
In fact, these inequalities imply
with given by
Inequality (1) is seen as follows:
with , where denotes the Lebesgue measure of L. Similarly, inequality (2) results from
with .
Proposition 11
is a subalgebra of and is an ideal in .
Proof
This is evident from the definitions.
Theorem 12
Let and . Then
-
(i)
is moderate,
-
(ii)
is moderate,
-
(iii)
is negligible, and
-
(iv)
if is negligible then .
Proof
(i): Fix x for the moderateness test and let be arbitrary. Fix any and . Then there are constants and such that for all . Hence, we see that
with . Moreover, we have
with . Higher differentials of vanish and the moderateness test is satisfied with for .
(ii): Fix x and let be arbitrary. For any and we have
with . Differentials of vanish, i.e., for .
(iii): Fix x and let be arbitrary. For any and we have
Hence, with , and the negligibility test is satisfied with for , for and for .
(iv): We show that every point has an open neighborhood V such that , which implies .
Given , let be as in the characterization of negligibility in Proposition 8. Choose an open neighborhood V of x such that and such that . With , Proposition 8 gives , and , where has the form
Choose with , and for with , where q is chosen such that for all with (e.g., take , where is the degree of with respect to y). For set . Then for , defines an element because for . Consequently, we have
Because of the estimates
which may be verified by a direct calculation, we have
by the choice of q, which means that in C(V) and hence also in . On the other hand, we have
in , as is easily verified. This completes the proof.
Theorem 13
For we have
-
(i)
and ,
-
(ii)
and .
Proof
The claims for are clear because
for some constant C depending on X. As to , we have to deal with terms of the form
for which we use the estimate
for some constant C depending on X.
We now come to the quotient algebra.
Definition 14
We define the Colombeau algebra of generalized functions on by .
is a -module and an associative commutative algebra with unit . is a linear embedding of and an algebra embedding of into such that in for all smooth functions . Furthermore, the derivatives and are well-defined on .
Finally, we establish sheaf properties of . Note that for open, the restriction is well-defined because for open we have .
Proposition 15
Let and be open. If R is moderate then is moderate; if R is negligible then is negligible.
Proof
Suppose that . Fix , which gives . Set and let and be arbitrary. Then there are as in Definition 6. Let now be given. Choose such that on a neighborhood of K. Then () and
Hence, the moderateness test is satisfied for .
Now suppose that . For the negligibility test fix , which gives . Set and let and be arbitrary. Then as in Definition 7. Let now be given. Choose such that on a neighborhood of K. Then () and
which shows negligibility of .
Proposition 16
is a sheaf of algebras on .
Proof
Let be open and be a family of open subsets of such that .
We first remark that if satisfies for all i then , as is evident from the definition of negligibility.
Suppose now that we are given such that for all i, j with . Let be a partition of unity subordinate to , i.e., a family of mappings such that , is locally finite, for all and . Choose functions which are equal to 1 on an open neighborhood of the diagonal in for each i. For open and we define by
| 3 |
For showing smoothness of consider a curve . We have to show that is an element of . By [11, 3.8, p. 28] it suffices to show that for each open subset which is relatively compact in V the curve is smooth, but this holds because the sum in (3) then is finite. Hence, .
Fix for the moderateness test. There is a finite index set F and an open neighborhood such that implies . We can also assume that . Let Y be a neighborhood of x such that on for all . For each let be obtained from moderateness of as in Definition 6. Set , and let as well as be arbitrary. For each there are such that for any we have
Now we have, for ,
and hence, for ,
We see that
with , , some constant C(m) coming from the Leibniz rule, and given by
This shows that R is moderate. Finally, we claim that for all j. For this we first note that
for . Again, for there is a finite index set F and an open neighborhood such that implies , and we can assume that . Let Y be a neighborhood of x such that on for all and let be given by the negligibility test of according to Definition 7. Set . Fix any and . For each there are such that for we have
As above, we then have
with , , , and given by
This completes the proof.
An elementary version
We will now give a variant of the construction of Sect. 3 similar in spirit to Colombeau’s elementary algebra [2]: if we only consider derivatives along the coordinate lines of we can replace the smoothing kernels by convolutions. This way, one can use a simpler basic space which does not involve calculus on infinite dimensional locally convex spaces anymore:
Definition 17
Let be open. We set
and define to be the set of all mappings such that is smooth for fixed .
Note that this is almost the basic space used originally by Colombeau (see [2, 1.2.1, p. 18] or [9, Definition 1.4.3, p. 59]) but with in place of the space of test functions whose integral equals one. We now introduce a notation for the convolution kernel determined by a test function.
Definition 18
For we define
by
In fact, with this definition we have
, where as usually we set . Furthermore, for we write
The direct adaptation of Definition 6,7 then looks as follows:
Definition 19
Let . Then R is called moderate if
The subset of all moderate elements of is denoted by .
Similarly, R is called negligible if
The subset of all negligible elements of is denoted by .
It is convenient to work with the following simplification of these definitions.
Proposition 20
is moderate if and only if
Similarly, is negligible if and only if
Proof
Suppose R is moderate and fix . We can cover K by finitely many open sets obtained from Definition 19 and write with . Choose such that for all i. Fixing m, by moderateness there exist and for each i. Set and choose with for all i. Now given with we also have and we can estimate
Conversely, suppose the condition holds and fix for the moderateness test. Choose such that . By assumption there is with . Set . Then, fix and m for the moderateness test. There are c and by assumption. Now given with , we see that for and an arbitrary point we have , which means that . But then as desired.
If R is negligible we proceed similarly until the choice of and m gives and . Choose with on a neighborhood of , and define , which is bounded in . Then with and for all i we have
The converse is seen as for moderateness by restricting the elements of to U.
The embeddings now take the following form.
Definition 21
We define and by
Partial derivatives on then can be defined via differentiation in the second variable:
Definition 22
Let . We define derivatives () by
Theorem 23
We have and .
Proof
This is evident from the definitions.
Proposition 24
We have and .
Proof
. The second claim is clear.
Proposition 25
.
Proof
The result follows from
for suitable and , which is seen as in the proof of Proposition 10.
Similarly to Proposition 11 we have:
Proposition 26
is a subalgebra of and is an ideal in .
Theorem 27
Let and . Then
-
(i)
is moderate,
-
(ii)
is moderate,
-
(iii)
is negligible, and
-
(iv)
if is negligible then .
The proof is almost identical to that of Theorem 12 and hence omitted.
Definition 28
We define the elementary Colombeau algebra of generalized functions on by .
As before, one may show that is a sheaf.
Canonical mappings
In this section we show that the algebra constructed above is near to being universal in the sense that there exist canonical mappings from it into most of the classical Colombeau algebras which are compatible with the embeddings.
We begin by constructing a mapping .
Definition 29
Given we define by
where is chosen such that
in a neighborhood of x.
This definition is meaningful: given in we have for in a neighborhood V of x. Choosing with and in a neighborhood of x, we can take
. Obviously, does not depend on the choice of and is smooth, so indeed we have .
Proposition 30
Let . Then the following holds:
-
(i)
for .
-
(ii)
for .
-
(iii)
for .
-
(iv)
for .
Proof
(i): For we have
(ii) is clear.
(iii): Suppose that . Fixing , we obtain U as in Proposition 8. Let and m be given, set , and choose such that . Then Proposition 8 gives such that for ,
Now for with we have
, which gives
which proves that .
(iv): Similarly, if then for we have U as in Proposition 8. For , m given, , and such that , we obtain as in Proposition 8 such that
and hence
![]() |
which gives negligibility of .
The special algebra
We define the special Colombeau algebra with the embedding as in [4]: fix a mollifier with
Choosing with , on and we set
Moreover, with
we choose functions such that and on . Then the special algebra is given by
Definition 31
For we define by
Proposition 32
-
(i)
for .
-
(ii)
for .
-
(iii)
for .
-
(iv)
for .
Proof
(i) and (ii) are clear.
For (iii) it suffices to show the needed estimate locally. Fix , which gives as in Proposition 8. Choose any K, L such that , fix m, and set . Then there are as in Proposition 8. Because we have for small enough, which gives
Consequently, follows from
For negligibility we proceed similarly; the claim then follows by using that for a bounded subset we have for all , which is seen as in [4, Prop. 12, p. 38] and actually merely a restatement of the fact that for all N uniformly for .
The diffeomorphism invariant algebra
There are several variants of the diffeomorphism invariant algebra ; we will employ the following formulation [10, 13, 14]:
The spaces and employed in this definition are given as follows:
Definition 33
Let a net of smoothing kernels be given and denote the corresponding net of smoothing operators by . Then is called a test object on if
-
(i)
in ,
-
(ii)
: ,
-
(iii)
: ,
-
(iv)
: .
We denote the set of test objects on by . Similarly, is called a 0-test object if it satisfies these conditions with (i) and (iii) replaced by the following conditions:
-
(i’)
in ,
-
(iii’)
: .
The set of all 0-test objects on is denoted by .
Definition 34
For we define by
Proposition 35
-
(i)
for .
-
(ii)
for .
-
(iii)
for .
-
(iv)
for .
Proof
(i) and (ii) are clear from the definition. (iii) and (iv) follow directly from the estimates
which hold by definition of the spaces and .
The elementary algebra
For Colombeau’s elementary algebra we employ the formulation of [9, Section 1.4], Sect. 1.4. For we let be the set of all with integral one such that, if , all moments of order up to k vanish.
Definition 36
For we define by .
Proposition 37
-
(i)
for .
-
(ii)
for .
-
(iii)
for .
-
(iv)
for .
Proof
Again, (i) and (ii) are clear from the definition. For (iii), fix and . From Proposition 20 we obtain r, c and such that for , . For and small enough, , so we only have to take into account that for some . Similarly, (iv) is obtained from the fact that given any N, for q large enough we have for all .
Acknowledgements
Open access funding provided by Austrian Science Fund (FWF). This research was supported by project P26859-N25 of the Austrian Science Fund (FWF). The author expresses his thanks to D. Scarpalézos for a remark inciting the present study.
Footnotes
Dedicated to the memory of Prof. Todor Gramchev.
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