Prove that the Hillbert space is separable
A Hilbert space H is separable (that is, has a countable dense subset) if and only if it has one countable orthonormal basis if and only if every orthonormal basis for H is countable.
Proof. Suppose is separable and consider any orthonormal basis . Then if ∈ and we conclude . Thus has the discrete topology. Now a separable metric space is a separable metric space S has a countable dense subset. But is the only subset of itself that is dense in and so must be countable.
Suppose for the converse that there is one countable orthonormal basis
for . We look at the case ( a real Hilbert space) first. It is quite easy to check that the sets
are each countable and that their union is countable and dense in . The closure of each n is easily seen to be the R-linear span of and so the closure of includes all finite linear combinations . But, each is a limit of such finite linear combinations. Hence the closure of is all of . As is countable, this shows that must be separable. In the complex case ( a Hilbert space over ) we must take instead, so that we can get all finite -linear combinations of the in the closure of .
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