Weak operator topology
In functional analysis, the weak operator topology, often abbreviated WOT,[1] is the weakest topology on the set of bounded operators on a Hilbert spacethere is base of neighborhoods of the following type: choose a finite number of vectorsThe WOT is the weakest among all common topologies on, the bounded operators on a Hilbert spaceThe strong operator topology, or SOT, onBecause the inner product is a continuous function, the SOT is stronger than WOT.The linear functionals on the set of bounded operators on a Hilbert space that are continuous in the strong operator topology are precisely those that are continuous in the WOT (actually, the WOT is the weakest operator topology that leaves continuous all strongly continuous linear functionals on the setof bounded operators on the Hilbert space H).Because of this fact, the closure of a convex set of operators in the WOT is the same as the closure of that set in the SOT.The predual of B(H) is the trace class operators C1(H), and it generates the w*-topology on B(H), called the weak-star operator topology or σ-weak topology.The weak-operator and σ-weak topologies agree on norm-bounded sets in B(H).A net {Tα} ⊂ B(H) converges to T in WOT if and only Tr(TαF) converges to Tr(TF) for all finite-rank operator F. Since every finite-rank operator is trace-class, this implies that WOT is weaker than the σ-weak topology.To see why the claim is true, recall that every finite-rank operator F is a finite sum So {Tα} converges to T in WOT means Extending slightly, one can say that the weak-operator and σ-weak topologies agree on norm-bounded sets in B(H): Every trace-class operator is of the form where the seriesFor every trace-class S, by invoking, for instance, the dominated convergence theorem.Therefore every norm-bounded closed set is compact in WOT, by the Banach–Alaoglu theorem.The adjoint operation T → T*, as an immediate consequence of its definition, is continuous in WOT.Multiplication is not jointly continuous in WOT: again letAppealing to Cauchy-Schwarz, one has that both Tn and T*n converges to 0 in WOT.(Because WOT coincides with the σ-weak topology on bounded sets, multiplication is not jointly continuous in the σ-weak topology.)However, a weaker claim can be made: multiplication is separately continuous in WOT.We can extend the definitions of SOT and WOT to the more general setting where X and Y are normed spaces andis the space of bounded linear operators of the formThe resulting family of seminorms generates the weak operator topology onis a locally convex topological vector space when endowed with the WOT.Thus, a topological base for the SOT is given by open neighborhoods of the form where as beforeFor instance, "strong convergence" for vectors in a normed space sometimes refers to norm-convergence, which is very often distinct from (and stronger than) than SOT-convergence when the normed space in question isThe weak topology on a normed spaceis the coarsest topology that makes the linear functionals inAnd while the WOT is formally weaker than the SOT, the SOT is weaker than the operator norm topology.is a formally weaker topology than the SOT, but they nevertheless share some important properties.