In
mathematical analysis
Analysis is the branch of mathematics dealing with continuous functions, limits, and related theories, such as differentiation, integration, measure, infinite sequences, series, and analytic functions.
These theories are usually studied ...
, Lorentz spaces, introduced by
George G. Lorentz in the 1950s,
[G. Lorentz, "On the theory of spaces Λ", ''Pacific Journal of Mathematics'' 1 (1951), pp. 411-429.] are generalisations of the more familiar
spaces.
The Lorentz spaces are denoted by
. Like the
spaces, they are characterized by a
norm (technically a
quasinorm) that encodes information about the "size" of a function, just as the
norm does. The two basic qualitative notions of "size" of a function are: how tall is the graph of the function, and how spread out is it. The Lorentz norms provide tighter control over both qualities than the
norms, by exponentially rescaling the measure in both the range (
) and the domain (
). The Lorentz norms, like the
norms, are invariant under arbitrary rearrangements of the values of a function.
Definition
The Lorentz space on a
measure space
A measure space is a basic object of measure theory, a branch of mathematics that studies generalized notions of volumes. It contains an underlying set, the subsets of this set that are feasible for measuring (the -algebra) and the method that ...
is the space of complex-valued
measurable function
In mathematics and in particular measure theory, a measurable function is a function between the underlying sets of two measurable spaces that preserves the structure of the spaces: the preimage of any measurable set is measurable. This is in ...
s
on ''X'' such that the following
quasinorm is finite
:
where
and
. Thus, when
,
:
and, when
,
:
It is also conventional to set
.
Decreasing rearrangements
The quasinorm is invariant under rearranging the values of the function
, essentially by definition. In particular, given a complex-valued
measurable function
In mathematics and in particular measure theory, a measurable function is a function between the underlying sets of two measurable spaces that preserves the structure of the spaces: the preimage of any measurable set is measurable. This is in ...
defined on a measure space,
, its decreasing rearrangement function,