Hilbert Spaces
angle in an inner product space.
The length, or
The theory of vector spaces and linear maps
underpins a large part of mathematics. However,
angles cannot be defined using vector space con-
cepts alone, since linear maps do not in general
preserve angles. An inner product space can be
thought of as a vector space with just enough ex-
tra structure for the notion of angle to make sense.
The simplest example of an inner product on a
vector space is the standard scalar product defined
on Rn , the space of all real sequences of length n, as
follows. If v = (v1 , . . . , vn ) and w = (w1 , . . . , wn )
are two such sequences, then their scalar product,
denoted
v, w, is the sum v1 w1 +v2 w2 +· · ·+vn wn .
(For example, the scalar product of (3, 2, −1) and
(1, 4, 4) is 3 × 1 + 2 × 4 + (−1) × 4 = 7.)
Amongst the properties that the scalar product
has are the following two.
(i) It is linear in each variable separately. That
is,
λu + µv, w = λ
u, w + µ
v, w for any
three vectors u, v and w and any two scalars
λ and µ, and similarly
u, λv+µw = λ
u, v+
µ
u, w.
(ii) The scalar product
v, v of any vector v with
itself is always a non-negative real number,
and is zero only if v is zero.
In a general vector space, any function
v, w of
pairs of vectors v and w that has these two proper-
ties is called an inner product, and a vector space
with an inner product is called an inner product
space. If the vector space has complex scalars, then
instead of (i) one must use the following modifica-
tion.
(i
) For any three vectors u, v and w and any two
scalars λ and µ,
λu + µv, w = λ
u, w +
µ
v, w, and
u, λv + µw = λ̄
u, v + µ̄
u, w.
That is, the inner product is conjugate-linear
in the second variable.
The reason this has anything to do with angles is
that in R2 and R3 the scalar product of two vectors
v and w works out as the length of v times the
length of w times the cosine of the angle between
them. In particular, since a vector v makes an
angle of zero with itself,
v, v is the square of the
length of v.
1
This gives us a natural way to define length and
norm, of a vector v, denoted v, is
v, v. Given
two vectors v and w, the angle between them is
defined by the fact that it lies between 0 and π (or
180◦ ) and its cosine is
v, w/v w. Once length
has been defined, we can also talk about distance:
the distance d(v, w) between v and w is the length
of their difference, or v − w. This definition of
distance satisfies the axioms for a metric space.
From the notion of angle, we can say what it is
for v and w to be orthogonal to each other: this
simply means that
v, w = 0.
The usefulness of inner product spaces goes far
beyond their ability to represent the geometry of
two- and three-dimensional space. Where they re-
ally come into their own is if they are infinite di-
mensional. Then it becomes convenient if they sat-
isfy the additional property of completeness: that
every Cauchy sequence [CR needed!] converges. A
complete inner product space is called a Hilbert
space.
Two important examples of Hilbert spaces are
the following.
(a) 2 is the natural infinite-dimensional general-
ization of Rn with the standard scalar prod-
uct. It is the set of all infinite sequences
(a1 , a2 , a3 , . . . ) such that the infinite sum
|a1 |2 + |a2 |2 + |a3 |2 + · · · converges. The inner
product of (a1 , a2 , a3 , . . . ) and (b1 , b2 , b3 , . . . )
is a1 b1 + a2 b2 + a3 b3 + · · · (which can be
shown to converge by the Cauchy–Schwarz
inequality.)
(b) L2 [0, 2π] is the set of all functions f de-
fined on the interval [0, 2π] of all real num-
bers
 2π between 0 and 2π, such that the integral
0
|f (x)|2
dx makes sense and is finite. The
inner product of two functions f and g is de-
2π
fined to be 0 f (x)g(x) dx. (For technical
reasons, this definition is not quite accurate
as a non-zero function can have norm zero,
but this problem can easily be dealt with.)
The second of these examples is central to
Fourier analysis. A trigonometric function is a
function of the form cos(mx) or sin(nx). The inner
product of any two different trigonometric func-
tions is zero, so they are all orthogonal. Even more
importantly, the trigonometric functions serve as a
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coordinate system for the space L2 [0, 2π], in that

every function f in the space can be represented
as an (infinite) linear combination of trigonomet-
ric functions. This allows Hilbert spaces to model
sound waves: if the function f represents a sound
wave, then the trigonometric functions are the
pure tones that are its constituent parts.
Hilbert spaces (with complex scalars) are also
central to quantum mechanics. The vectors of a
Hilbert space can be used to represent possible
states of a quantum mechanical system, and ob-
servable features of that system correspond to cer-
tain linear maps.

WTG