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DMat0101, Notes 4: The Fourier transform of the Schwartz class and tempered distributions
Pos ted on March 20, 2011 by ioannis parissis

In this section we go back to the space of Schwartz functions

and we define the Fourier transform in this

set up. This will turn out to be extremely useful and flexible. The reason for this is the fact that Schwartz functions are much `nicer than functions that are just integrable. On the other hand, Schwartz functions are dense in all spaces, , so many statements established initially for Schwartz functions go through in the spaces. A third reason is the dual of the space , the space of tempered more general setup of integrable functions 1. The space of Schwartz functions as a Frchet space We recall that the space of Schwartz functions functions consists of all smooth (i.e. infinitely differentiable) defined for any

distributions, is rich enough to allow us to define the Fourier transform of much rougher objects than

such that the function itself together with all its derivatives decay faster than any as

polynomial at infinity. To make this more precise it is useful to introduce the seminorms non-negative integer

where and It is clear that Gaussian

are multi-indices and as usual we write for .

. Thus

if and only if

is a vector space. We have already seen that a basic example of a function in and it is not hard to check that the more general Gaussian function

is the , where

is a positive definite real matrix, is also in Schwartz function and the space

. Furthermore, the product of two Schwartz functions is again a

is closed under taking partial derivatives or multiplying by complex , , and each one of , in the corresponding topologies.

polynomials of any degree. As we have already seen (and its obvious by the definitions) the space of infinitely differentiable functions with compact support is contained in these spaces is a dense subspace of for any and also in

The seminorms defined above define a topology in definition:

. In order to study this topology we need the following

Definition 1 A Frchet space is a locally convex topological vector space which is induced by a complete invariant metric. A translation invariant metric on the topology. Indeed for two functions . It is not hard to actually define a metric on we set which induces

The function . The metric such that

is translation invariant, symmetric and that it separates the elements of induces a topology in ; a set is open if and only if there exists exists and

Convergence in

. By definition, a sequence

converges to if is given by the following lemma.

as

. A more

handy description of converging sequences in Lemma 2 A sequence

converges to if and only if

for all

. as . Then, since

Proof: First assume that

converges to zero as

and all summands are positive, we conclude that for every

we have that

as

. However, this easily implies that as for every

as and let

, for every

. such that

Assume now that . Thus,

. We choose a positive integer

Now, every term in the finite sum of the first summand converges to as . is a topological vector space. The topology induced by turns To see this we need to check that addition of elements in continuous with respect to . This is very easy to check. Local convexity. For and consider the family of sets

and we get that

as

into a topological vector space.

and multiplication by complex constants are

We claim that system for every

is a neighborhood basis of the point for the topology induced by . Indeed, the defines a neighborhood basis of . On the other hand it is implicit in the proof of Lemma 2 that and some such that . This proves the claim.

there is some

Now, in order to show that clear for the neighborhood basis however that the balls

endowed with the topology induced by is locally convex it suffices (by defined above since the seminorms are positive homogeneous. Observe

translation invariance) to show that the point has a neighborhood basis which consists of convex sets. This is are not convex. , , are not convex sets.

Exercise 1 Show that the balls

Completeness. The space a Cauchy sequence in

is a complete topological vector space with the topology induced by . If , the sequence

is

then for every

is a Cauchy sequence in the space complete we conclude that argument shows now that .

, with the topology induced by the supremum norm. Since this space is . A standard uniform convergence

converges uniformly to some

Remark 1 In general, a sequence all whenever

in a topological vector space is called a Cauchy sequence if so that for

for every open neighborhood of zero , there exists some positive integer with the more familiar one, that is: for every . there exists

. If the topology is induced by a translation invariant metric, this definitions coincides such that

The discussion above gives the following: Theorem 3 The space Frchet space. We now give a general Lemma that describes continuity of linear operators acting on description of continuity of linear transformations. Lemma 4 (i) Let be a Banach space and and such that be a linear operator. Then is by giving a simple , endowed with the metric and the topology induced by , is a

continuous if and only if there exists

for all (ii) Let there exists

. be a linear operator. Then and such that is continuous if and only if for each

for all

. is continuous if (1) holds. On the other hand, suppose that . Thus implies that . Now we have that is is a neighborhood of

Proof: For (i) it is clear that continuous and let in

be the open ball of center and radius in . Then

and hence it contains some

Similarly, if

is continuous then for every

there is

so that

This implies (2) using the same trick we used to deduce (1). It is obvious that for every continuous: , . Let us show however that this embedding is also

Proposition 5 Let there exists so that

. Then the identity map

is continuous, that is,

for all Proof: Let

. . For and we have that

If

observe that

so there is nothing to prove.

2. The Fourier transform on the Schwartz class Since there is no difficulty in defining the Fourier transform on by means of the formula

All the properties of transform on For

that we have seen in the previous weeks notes are of course valid for the Fourier .

. As we shall now see, there is much more we can say for the Fourier transform on we have that

and every polynomial

. Using the commutation relations

we see that

. Furthermore, since

we can use the inversion formula to write

This shows that

is onto and of course it is a one to one operator as we have already seen.

Finally let us see that it is also a continuous map. To see this observe that

for every

, by Proposition 5. However,

so we get that

for every

which shows that

is continuous.

We have thus proved the following: Theorem 6 The Fourier transform is a homeomorphism of onto itself. The operator

is the continuous inverse of

on

on

We immediately get Plancherels identities: Corollary 7 Let . We have that

In particular, for every

we have that

Proof: The multiplication formula of the previous weeks notes reads

for where

and thus for . Observing that

. Now let

and apply this formula to the functions

we get the first of the identities in the corollary. Applying this identity to the

functions and

we also get the second.

We also get an nice proof of the fact that convolution of Schwartz functions is again a Schwartz function. Corollary 8 Let Proof: For . 3. The Fourier transform on We have already seen that the Fourier transform is defined for functions by means of the formula we have that . Then . . Since we conclude that and thus that

While this integral converges absolutely for and in fact we have that

, this is not the case in general for

. However,

Corollary 7 says that the Fourier transform is a bounded linear operator on

which is a dense subset of

for every isometry on

. As we have seen several times already, this means that the Fourier transform has a unique . In fact the Fourier transform is an as identity (3) shows. which is an isometry and maps onto is

bounded extension, which we will still denote by , throughout

Definition 9 A linear operator called a unitary operator.

Corollary 10 The Fourier transform is a unitary operator on The definition of the Fourier transform on sequence such that in

. , one should find a

given above suggest that given and define

This, however, is a bit too abstract. The following lemma gives us an alternative way to calculate the Fourier transform on . . The following formulas are valid

Lemma 11 Let

where the notation above means that the limits are considered in the Proof: Given let us define the functions

norm.

Then on the one hand we have that for all so we can write

in

. On the other hand the functions

belong to

Since the Fourier transform is an isometry on the second formula is similar. 4. The Fourier transform on

we also have that

as

in

. The proof of

and Hausdorff-Young and on we are now in position to interpolate between

Having defined the Fourier transform on

these two spaces. Indeed, we have established that

and that all

is of strong type . Setting

and of strong type we get

both with norm . We have also seen that it is well where is the dual exponent of . This shows that

defined on the simple functions with finite measure support and on the Schwartz class, both dense subsets of spaces for . The Riesz-Thorin interpolation theorem now applies to show the following: Theorem 12 (Hausdorff-Young Theorem) For bounded linear operator the Fourier transform extends to

of norm at most , that is we have

Remark 2 This is one instance where the Riesz-Thorin interpolation theorem fails to give the sharp norm, although the endpoint norms are sharp. Indeed, the actual norm of the Fourier transform is

This is a deep theorem that has been proved firstly by K.I. Babenko in the special case that even integer and then by W. Beckner in the general case. Exercise 2 Let be a general Gaussian function of the form

is an

for some positive definite real matrix

. Show that

Observe that this gives a lower bound on the norm

Hint: Write as a composition of translations, modulations and generalized dilations of the basic Gaussian function . , has a similar solution as the case. One can if is

Remark 3 The inversion problem for easily see that the means of

converge to in

as well as for every Lebesgue point of

appropriately chose. In particular this is the case for the Abel or Gauss means of . We also have the following extension on the action of the Fourier transform on convolutions. Proposition 13 Let belongs to and . We have that for some . Then, as we know, the function

for almost every

We close this section by discussing the possibility of other mapping properties of the Fourier transform, besides the ones given by the Hausdorff-Young theorem. In particular we have seen that the Fourier transform is of strong type for all ? is of type we must have that . . . But are there any other pairs for which the Fourier transform is of strong, or even weak type

The easiest thing to see is that whenever Exercise 3 Suppose that

is of weak type

. Show that we must necessarily have

Hint: Exploit the scale invariance of the Fourier transform; in particular remember the symmetry . is of the form . The Hausdorff-Young fails for

The previous exercise thus shows that the only possible type for theorem shows that this is actually true whenever . The following exercise describes one way to prove this.

. It turns out however that the bound

Exercise 4 Suppose that integer and . For

cannot be of strong type consider the function

when

. (i) Let

be a large positive

Show that

(ii) For any

show that

if

and

are large enough. For this show first the endpoint bounds for

and

. This will

also give you the intermediate upper bounds by log-convexity. For the lower bounds, consider the values of close to integer multiples of . (iii) The previous steps show that

which allows you to conclude the proof. 5. The space of tempered distributions The purpose of this paragraph is to introduce a space of `generalized functions that is much larger than all the spaces we have seen so far, namely the space of tempered distributions. Let us begin with an informal discussion, drawing some analogies with some more classical (though not so classical) function spaces. We have seen already that at whenever can be identified with the dual and the underlying measure is -finite, then the space , by means of the pairing:

This is already quite interesting. A function in

is already a generalized object in the sense that it is only

defined up to sets of measure zero; so in fact it represents and equivalent class. Furthermore, it can be identified with a linear functional acting on another function space. We have see that the space is contained in every space and furthermore that it is dense in , we get a larger dual space: for all

. Restricting our attention to a smaller class of function, the space

We thus obtain a space of generalized functions that contains the `classical

spaces. As we shall see, this

space is much bigger and in particular it allows us to differentiate (in the appropriate sense) and remain in this class of generalized functions and, most notably, consider the Fourier transform of these objects and still remain in the class. These operation many times are not even available on even define the Fourier transform on operations on for spaces; for example we cannot . Furthermore, even when there is a way to define these function, the resulting function is not in general

functions we dont necessarily stay in the given class of functions. For example, while it is

perfectly legitimate to define the Fourier transform of an

an integrable function. We shall see that the fact that under the corresponding operations. In what follows we will many times write Definition 14 A linear functional continuous on for the dual

is closed under taking partial derivatives,

multiplying by polynomials and by taking the Fourier transform of its elements, its dual space is also closed

and

for the pairing

will be called a tempered distribution if it is described in the previous sections. and

with respect to the topology on

That is, the linear functional such that

is a tempered distribution if and only if there exists some

for all

. with the weak-* topology; a sequence of tempered distributions for all . This is the weakest topology such that for each converges to a the

We equip the space limit if one has functional

is continuous. The space

equipped with this topology will also be denoted by for whenever and

. . Be careful

In what follows we will also use the notation not to confuse this pairing with .

6. Examples of tempered distributions We now describe several examples of classes of tempered distributions. We begin by showing how we can identify some known function classes with tempered distributions. (i) Any element , can be identified with an element by means of the formula

and the map function. It is clear that

is continuous. We will say in this case that the tempered distribution

is an

is linear. Furthermore we have that

for some non-negative integer mapping estimate. (ii) Any element weak-* topology, that is, that

, by Proposition 5, which shows that in for every we set

by Lemma 4. Furthermore, the . We need to show that in the

is continuous. Indeed, if

. However this is a consequence of the previous

can be identified with an element

by means of the formula

and the map

is continuous. We will say in this case that the tempered distribution

is an

Schwartz function. The proof is very similar to that of (i). (iii) If be a finite Borel measure. Then can be identified with a tempered distribution by

means of the formula

and the map

is continuous. We will say in this case that the tempered distribution

is a (finite

Borel) measure. The proof is the same as that of the preceding cases. (iv) Let . A measurable function such that function. Again the functional is an element of such that for some non-negative integer . For is

called a tempered

such a function is often

called a slowly increasing function. Similarly a Borel measure

is called a tempered Borel measure and it defines an element of

by setting

We will say that the tempered distribution Exercise 5 Show that if

is a tempered Borel measure. and the map is

is a tempered Borel measure then

continuous. Conclude the corresponding statement if is a tempered defines a tempered measure. Exercise 6 Show that a Borel measure growth: for every we have that

function. Observe that

is a tempered measure if and only if it is of polynomial

for some positive integer

and all

. In particular,

is locally finite.

Remark 4 From the previous definitions one gets the impression that the term `tempered is closely connected to `of at most polynomial growth. This is in some sense correct since all functions or measure of at most polynomial growth define tempered distribution. On the other hand, the opposite claim is not true. Indeed, observe that the function this function, is a slowly increasing function (actually it is bounded) and thus defines a tempered distribution. Thus, the derivative of is also a tempered distribution although it grows exponentially fast.

All the previous examples identify functions and measures (of moderate growth) with tempered distributions and the embeddings are continuous. However the space neither functions nor measures. Exercise 7 Show that the functional function either). Example 1 (The principal value distribution) We define the functional as for all is a tempered distribution also contains `rougher objects which are

which does not arise from a tempered measure (and thus it does not arise from a tempered

Then

. To see that

let us fix some

and

and write

Now observe that

thus the limit of the first summand as

exists and

Moreover we have that

Furthermore this distribution does not arise from any locally finite measure. It is also easy to see that this tempered distribution cannot arise from any locally finite Borel measure. For this consider a Schwartz function adopted to an interval of the form for . be a

Exercise 8 (The principal value distribution in many dimensions) Let homogeneous function of degree . This means that

(i) Show that there exists a function (ii) Assume that . For

such that we define

where

Show that the limit in the previous definition exists and that distribution. 7. Basic operations on the space of tempered distributions We have already seen that the space

defines a tempered

is closed under several basic operations: differentiation, multiplying

by polynomials, multiplication between elements of the Schwartz space and, most notably, the Fourier transform. The space of tempered distributions has very similar properties: Derivatives in by parts formula : We begin the discussion by considering and writing down the integration

According to the previous definitions we can rewrite the previous formula as

or

The right hand side of the previous identity though makes sense for any . Also, for the mapping continuous. We thus define the partial derivative of any by means of

in the place of

whenever is

is continuous since is continuous and the map

The previous discussion implies that Example 2 Let be the tempered

. function defined as

The function is many times called the Heaviside step function. Clearly defines a tempered distribution in the usual way

For every

we then have

That is Remark 5 The fact that the distributional derivative of the Heaviside step function is the Dirac mass at is intuitively obvious. The function is differentiable everywhere except at and whenever . On the other hand there is a jump discontinuity of weight equal to at has a distributional derivative which coincides with Dirac which roughly speaking requires an infinite derivative to be realized. In general, a jump discontinuity of weight at a point mass of weight at the point Example 3 Let .

be a Dirac mass at . We then have

This also explains the minus sign in Exercise 7. Exercise 9 In dimension show that: is . is equal to is equal to . .

(i) The distributional derivative of the signum function

(ii) The distributional derivative of the locally integrable function (iii) The distributional derivative of the locally integrable function Translations, Modulations, Dilations and reflections in operator maps a measurable function to the function we have that shows that whenever

: We have see that the translation . A trivial change of variables

, where

Now assume that

is a tempered

function (say). In the language of distributions we can rewrite the previous

identity as

for all

. Again, the write hand side of this identity is well defined for any as

and we define the

translation of any distribution

It is easy to see that Similarly we define for

. and the tempered distributions

Convolution in

: Let

. Then it is an easy application of Fubinis theorem that

where

is the reflection of . In the language of distributions the previous identity reads

Now the right hand side of the previous identity is well defined whenever the distribution all function we need to have that by means of the formula . This is obviously the case if

while in order to define for with a

. Now assume that is a function such that . Thus we can define the convolution of any

It is easy to see that the function thus for every

is continuous as a composition of the continuous maps and .

and

Exercise 10 Actually, the condition the convolution

is a bit too much to ask if one just wants to define whenever for all

. As we have observed, the only requirement is that

. Suppose that is a rapidly decreasing function, that is . Show the convolution of of .

and can be defined and that is again an element

It turns out that the convolution of a tempered distribution with a Schwartz function is a function: Theorem 15 Let formula and . Then the convolution is the function given by the

Moreover,

and for all multi-indices

the function

is slowly increasing.

For the proof of this theorem see [SW].

The Fourier transform on

: We now come to the definition and action of the Fourier transform of the multiplication formula implies that

tempered distribution. As in all the other definitions, first we investigate what happens in the case the tempered distribution is a Schwartz function. So, letting

In the language of tempered distributions we have that

Observing once more that the right hand side is well defined for all

and that the map as

is well defined and continuous we define the Fourier transform of any tempered distribution

We have that

whenever

. It is also trivial to define the inverse Fourier transform of a

tempered distribution as

and to show that same way.

is a homeomorphism of

onto itself. Also the operator

satisfies all

the symmetry properties that the classical Fourier transform satisfies and commutes with derivatives in the

Example 4 (The Fourier transform of

in

) We consider the function

Note that

is locally integrable in

and it decays at infinity thus it can be identified with a is not in any space so we

tempered distribution which we will still call . On the other hand in the sense of distributions is given as

cant consider its Fourier transform in the classical sense. We claim that the Fourier transform of

First of all observe that it suffices to show that

for all

. Here it is convenient to express the function

as an average of functions with known

Fourier transforms. Indeed, this can be done my means of the identity

which can be proved by simple integration by parts. Now fix a function

. We have that

by an application of Fubinis theorem since the function a Gaussian. Indeed we have

is an integrable function on

. The

inner integral can be calculated now by using the multiplication formula and the (known) Fourier transform of

Putting the last two identities together we get

Now observe that by changing variables

we have

and thus

since

is locally integrable in

and

. A second application of Fubinis theorem then gives (4) and

proves the claim. Exercise 11 (i) Let be a smooth function such that for all multi-indices for some the partial derivatives

have at most polynomial growth: tempered distribution

. Then the product of a

with is well defined by means of the formula

and (ii) If

. and then show that

Remark 6 The definition of the Fourier transform on we have that

implies that whenever

Thus the Fourier transform on tempered distributions is an extension of the classical definition of the Fourier transform. If on the other hand function and thus by looking at for some then is a tempered is a tempered distribution. This allows us to define the Fourier transform of will not be a function in general. we define

as a tempered distribution. The discussion the followed the Hausdorff-Young

theorem however suggests that

Exercise 12 (Poisson summation formula) For

Note that

can be identified with the sum of a unit masses positioned on every point of the

integer lattice

Show that

and that

. by proving the following intermediate

Hints: (a) First prove the case of dimension statements. (i) Show that satisfies the invariances

and

. and . If

(ii) Consider a Schwartz function

with support in the interval

has compact support show that the function

is a smooth function with compact support. (iii) Let Show that be a tempered distribution which satisfies the invariances and .

whenever

are as in step (ii). Conclude that

for some all

, whenever

is a Schwartz function with compact support. Extend this equality to

by a density argument. must

(iv) Step (iii) essentially shows that any tempered distribution that has the symmetries in agree with up to a multiplicative constant. Observe that satisfies the same invariances. Conclude that Schwartz function (b) For general by step (i). Determine the numerical constant

by testing against the

. This concludes the proof for the one dimensional case.

use Fubinis theorem to show that

where

denotes the (one-dimensional) Fourier transform in the

direction. Thus step (a)

implies that

for every

. Conclude the proof by iterating this identity. and

Exercise 13 (Equivalent form of Poisson summation formula) If then we have that

8. Translation invariant operators

Let that

be vector spaces of functions on commuted with translations or that

and suppose that and define

is an operator that maps for all for all

into ,

. We will say . We

is translation invariant if

. To see an

example of such an operator, consider have seen that

is well defined and furthermore that

that is, that

is of strong type

. We have seen that the convolution commutes with translations which implies (which might not be a function).

commutes with translations. It is quite interesting that, in some sense, all translation invariant

operators are given by a convolution with an appropriate `kernel Theorem 16 Let ,

, be a bounded linear operator that commutes such that

with translations. Then there exists a unique tempered distribution

Thus bounded linear operators of strong type tempered distributions such that

are in a one to one correspondence with the subclass of

for all

In this case we will slightly abuse language and say that the tempered distribution

is of type

. It would be desirable to characterize this class of tempered distribution for all this direction: Proposition 17 (`The high exponents are on the left) Suppose that which is translation invariant and of strong type the class of tempered distributions of type Exercise 14 Prove Proposition 17 above. Hint: Suppose that a that is translation invariant and of strong type with is empty whenever .

but such a

characterization is not known in general and probably does not exist. Here we gather some partial results in

is a linear operator . In particular

. Then we must have that

. Let

and consider the function

for some large positive integer by choosing the points have that However, if is of strong type

and points

that will be chosen appropriately. Show that for large.

to be far apart from each other (how far depends only on ) we while the left hand side will be of the order this is only possible if .

We also have a characterization of translation invariant operators in the following two special cases. Theorem 18 ( that ) A distribution is of type if and only if there exists such

. In this case, the norm of the operator

defined on

as

is equal to Theorem 19 (

. Moreover, ) A distribution

. is of type if and only if it is a finite Borel measure.

In this case, the norm of the operator

defined on

as

is equal to the total variation

of the measure

For the proofs of these theorems and more details see [SW]. In this course we will not actually need that every translation invariant operator is a convolution operator since we will mostly consider specific examples where this is obvious. We will focus instead on the following case. 8.1. Multiplier Operators Let . For we define

We will say that Observe that

is a multiplier operator associated to the multiplier is a well defined linear operator on

and in fact it is bounded. Rather than relying on

Theorem 18 let us see this directly:

In fact it is not hard to check that the opposite inequality is true so that Exercise 15 If is a multiplier operator associated to the multiplier

. show that

Thus

is a linear operator of type

. If

extends to a linear operator of type

, that is if there is an

estimate of the form

for all

, then we will say that

is multiplier on

. is in fact given in

Remark 7 The previous discussion and in particular Theorem 18 shows that the form

for some distributions. Share this: Print

. In fact

will be the inverse Fourier transform of

in the sense of

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About ioannis parissis I'm a postdoc researcher at the Center for mathematical analysis, geometry and dynamical systems at IST , Lisbon, Portugal. View all posts by ioannis parissis

This entry was posted in Dmat0101 - Harmonic Analysis, math.CA, Teaching and tagged distributional, Fourier Transform, Fourier transform on L^2, Frechet space, Hausdorff-Young, homeomorphism, Poisson summation formula, principal value, Schwartz functions, tempered distributions, unitary operator. Bookmark the permalink.

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