First Chapter: A Primer about Distributions

U. Gianazza
Dipartimento di Matematica F. Casorati
Universit di Pavia, Italy

Introduction to the Theory of Distributions and Applications

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1 Introduction; The Space D(); Definition of Distributions

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 Introduction and Notation

We introduce the notation we will use in the following, not only in this
first chapter, but in all of them.
An N-dimensional multi-index is an N-tuple
= (1, 2, . . . , N )
of non-negative integers. The absolute value of the multi-index is given
by
|| = 1 + 2 + + N .
To every multi-index, we associate the differential operator
N
def 1 2
D = 1 2
x1 x2 xNN
Finally, RN will always denote an open set, and K RN will always
denote a compact set.
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 The Space D() - I

Given K , DK () denotes the space of all C functions : R,

whose support is contained in K .
The space D() is the union of all the spaces DK (), as K ranges over
all possible compact subsets of . It is apparent that D() is a vector
space with the usual operations of addition of two functions, and
product of a function with a scalar (real or complex).
For D() we introduce the norms
def
kkn = max{|D (x)|, x , || n},
where n N.

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 The Space D() - II

We can now give the following

Definition
A sequence {i }iN D() is a Cauchy sequence in D() if
There exists K such that i DK () for all i N;
lim ki j kn = 0, for all n N.
i,j

Moreover,
Definition
A sequence {i }iN D() is said to be convergent to the function
0 in D() if
There exists K such that i DK () for all i N;
D i 0 uniformly, as i , for every multi-index .

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 The Space D() - III

Finally, a sequence {i }iN D() is said to be convergent to the

function in D() if the sequence {i }iN D() is convergent to
0 in D()
We have this fundamental result.
Theorem
In D() every Cauchy sequence {i }iN is convergent to a proper
D().
We might ask, whether it is possible to deduce the previous notion of
convergence from a norm, or at least from a distance. Unfortunately,
the topology induced by such a notion is not metrizable. It is a very
deep theorem, whose proof goes well beyond the limits of this course.

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 The Space D() - I
We can finally come to the definition of distributions.
Definition
A linear functional on D(), which is continuous with respect to the
topology we defined above, is called a distribution in . The space of all
distributions in is denoted with D().
What exactly do we mean by this definition? Let be a distribution in .
We have two distinct requirements:
1 For any , D(), for any , C

( + ) = () + ().
2 For any sequence {i }iN D() which converges to D() in
the topology of D(), we have
i in the topology of C.
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 The Space D() - II

D() is the dual space of D(). This is a very important and general
notion in Functional Analysis. We will not dwell on this notion here, and
we will build the theory following a sort of ad-hoc approach.
The space D() itself becomes a vector space over C when equipped
with an addition and scalar multiplication satisfying:
(1 + 2) = (1) + (2)
() = ()
for all 1, 2 D(), D(), and C.
In the following, we will denote a distribution in D() with u. The action
of u on the test function D() will be denoted with the
duality-pairing D hu, iD , or simply with hu, i.

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 The Space D() - III

In the previous definitions, the scalar quantities we considered were

complex numbers, but everything works exactly in the same way, when
the scalars are real. Unless explicitly needed, we will not distinguish the
two different cases.
We have this very important characterization of distributions.
Theorem
A linear functional u on D() is continuous (i.e. is a distribution in ) if
and only if for any K there exist an integer n N and a nonnegative
constant C such that
|hu, i| Ckkn
for all DK (). The constants C and n depend only on K , but not on
.
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 The Space D() - IV

If u is such that the previous inequality holds with the same n,

independently of the compact set K , the smallest of such ns is called
the order of the distribution. Notice that C might change with K . If such
an integer n does not exist, we say that the distribution u has infinite
order.
Consider for example the linear functional on D(R) defined by
h, i = (0) D(R).
It is straightforward to check that D(R) and has order zero. On the
other hand, the linear functional u on D(R) defined by
hu, i = (0) + (1) + + (j)(j) + . . . D(R)
belongs to D(R) as well, but has infinite order.

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