This is a truly beautiful (original to Dr. Singh?) result which is not in any textbook, if I understood him correctly. Having seen hard analytic proofs of this, I prefer his geometric method. When he started laying the background for the proof, I was a little skeptical: how interesting could the operator
be? Let’s find out…
The ultimate goal, the Unicity Theorem, states that the fourier (series) coefficients of a function in
are uniquely associated with it. Note, in this context,
is an abbreviation of
, and likewise for
.
Background (Invariant Subspaces and their Characterization)
Consider the aforementioned operator
: it is linear and continuous. Note also that
is also a linear, continuous operator from
to
. Recall the essentially bounded functions
can also be characterized by
. If
, then
can be defined as
, and is a continuous linear transformation.
Consider the commutant of
,
, consisting of all the continuous linear transformations on
which commute with
. For all
as defined before,
. In fact, it is clear that
.
Let
, then
, and
. Since
, also
. Let
, then
.
Take
, then
in the sense that
in the
norm. Since
is continuous,
, so for some subsequence
,
almost everywhere. Since
almost everywhere also,
almost everywhere, so
almost everywhere.
What was shown is that if
, then there is a
such that
for all
. This since
for all
,
. Together with the former inclusion, this shows
.
Recall if
is a Hilbert space and
a closed subspace of
, then
. If
is such that
(or equivalently,
),
is called doubly invariant on
.
A theorem due to Wiener neatly characterizes all doubly invariant subspaces of
:
Theorem Let
be a doubly invariant subspace of
on
. Then there exists a set of positive Lebesgue measure,
, such that
.
Proof
Since
is doubly invariant,
. Let
be the projection unto
; recall
is a continuous linear transformation, and acts as an identity on its image.
For all
,
, since
where
and
, so
since
. Therefore
, so
for some
.
; specifically, taking
,
.
Let
, so
; then
. Note that
guarantees
is of positive measure.
Unicity Theorem
Let
and suppose
for all
. Then
.
Proof
Let
where
. Assume
. Since
is orthogonal to the closure, M, of the linear span, N, of
.
Let
. Then
and
. Since
is continuous,
and
, so
is doubly invariant.
For some set
of positive measure,
, so
. Therefore
. Since
,
for some
, so
.
Therefore
a.e.