Convergence of Measures and Metrizability

This article should address metrizability for both narrow and wide convergence.

General Functional Analysis Refs

• Ambrosio, Gigli, Savaré (107-108), Brezis (72-76)

Narrow Convergence

• Unit ball of dual space of $C_{b}(X)$ is, in general, not metrizable: [Conway, A Course in Functional Analysis, Theorem 6.6]
• It is metrizable when restricted to probability measures: Ambrosio, Gigli, Savaré (106-108)

Wide Convergence

• On the other hand, if X is a metrizable locally compact space that is σ-compact, then $C_{0}(X)$ is separable, [Conway, A Course in Functional Analysis, III. Banach Spaces, exercise 14]

Weak-star topologies

Given a Banach space $X$ and its Banach dual $X^{*}$, the dual can be endowed with the weakest topology that makes the evaluation maps at elements of $X$ continuous. This is called the weak-star topology relative to $X$. By Banach-Alaoglu, the unit ball of $X^{*}$ (which we call $(X^{*})_{1}$) with the weak-star topology is compact.

In the case where $X$ is norm separable, the weak-star topology on the unit ball of $X^{*}$ can, in fact, be metrized. Fix a sequence $\{x_{n}\}_{n=1}^{\infty }$ that is countable and dense in $X$. Define the metric $d$ by $d(\phi ,\psi ):=\sum _{n=0}^{\infty }2^{-n}{\frac {|\phi (x_{n})-\psi (x_{n})|}{1+|\phi (x_{n})-\psi (x_{n})|}}$. This is a sum of pseudometrics, necessarily convergent because each term is less than or equal to $2^{-n}$, and is nondegenerate because if $d(\phi ,\psi )=0$, then $\phi (x_{n})=\psi (x_{n})$ for each $x_{n}$, which would imply that the continuous functions $\phi ,\psi$ agreed on a dense subset of a metric space. The identity map from $((X^{*})_{1},w*)$ to $((X^{*})_{1},d)$ is continuous: choose a net $(\phi _{\gamma })_{\gamma \in \Gamma }\to \phi$. Then for each $\epsilon >0$, perform the following truncation process: choose a large $N$ so that $\sum _{n=N+1}^{\infty }2^{-n}=2^{-N}<{\frac {\epsilon }{2}}$. Because $\phi _{\gamma }\xrightarrow {w*} \phi$, for each $n\in \{1,\ldots ,N\}$, there is some large $\gamma _{n}$ such that for all $\gamma \succeq \gamma _{n}$, $|\phi _{\gamma }(x_{n})-\phi (x-n)|<{\frac {\epsilon }{2\cdot N\cdot 2^{-n}}}$. By the net order axioms, there is some large $\gamma _{0}\succeq \gamma _{i}\forall i\in \{1,\ldots ,N\}$. So for each $\gamma \succeq \gamma _{0}$, $d(\phi _{\gamma },\phi )<\sum _{n=1}^{N}{\frac {1}{2N}}+\sum _{n=N+1}^{\infty }2^{-n}<\epsilon$. Now the identity map between the two spaces is a continuous bijection between a compact and a Hausdorff topological space, and is therefore a homeomorphism. So it metrizes the weak-star topology.