Relation To Continuity of Forms
On a finite-dimensional linear space, a quadratic form x↦f(x) is always a (finite) linear combination of products x↦g(x) h(x) of two linear functionals g and h. Therefore, assuming that the scalars are complex numbers, every sequence xn satisfying g(xn) → 0 for all linear functionals g, satisfies also f(xn) → 0 for all quadratic forms f.
In infinite dimension the situation is different. For example, in a Hilbert space, an orthonormal sequence xn satisfies g(xn) → 0 for all linear functionals g, and nevertheless f(xn) = 1 where f is the quadratic form f(x) = ||x||2. In more technical words, this quadratic form fails to be weakly sequentially continuous at the origin.
On a reflexive Banach space with the approximation property the following two conditions are equivalent:
- every quadratic form is weakly sequentially continuous at the origin;
- the Banach space of all quadratic forms is reflexive.
Quadratic forms are 2-homogeneous polynomials. The equivalence mentioned above holds also for n-homogeneous polynomials, n=3,4,...
Read more about this topic: Polynomially Reflexive Space
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