Haar measure


In mathematical analysis, the Haar measure assigns an "invariant volume" to subsets of locally compact topological groups, consequently defining an integral for functions on those groups.
This measure was introduced by Alfréd Haar in 1933, though its special case for Lie groups had been introduced by Adolf Hurwitz in 1897 under the name "invariant integral". Haar measures are used in many parts of analysis, number theory, group theory, representation theory, statistics, probability theory, and ergodic theory.

Preliminaries

Let be a locally compact Hausdorff topological group. The -algebra generated by all open subsets of is called the Borel algebra. An element of the Borel algebra is called a Borel set. If is an element of and is a subset of, then we define the left and right translates of by g as follows:
Left and right translates map Borel sets into Borel sets.
A measure on the Borel subsets of is called left-translation-invariant if for all Borel subsets and all one has
A measure on the Borel subsets of is called right-translation-invariant if for all Borel subsets and all one has

Haar's theorem

There is, up to a positive multiplicative constant, a unique countably additive, nontrivial measure on the Borel subsets of satisfying the following properties:
Such a measure on is called a left Haar measure. It can be shown as a consequence of the above properties that for every non-empty open subset. In particular, if is compact then is finite and positive, so we can uniquely specify a left Haar measure on by adding the normalization condition.
Some authors define a Haar measure on Baire sets rather than Borel sets. This makes the regularity conditions unnecessary as Baire measures are automatically regular. Halmos rather confusingly uses the term "Borel set" for elements of the -ring generated by compact sets, and defines Haar measure on these sets.
The left Haar measure satisfies the inner regularity condition for all -finite Borel sets, but may not be inner regular for all Borel sets. For example, the product of the unit circle and the real line with the discrete topology is a locally compact group with the product topology and Haar measure on this group is not inner regular for the closed subset.
The existence and uniqueness of a left Haar measure was first proven in full generality by André Weil. Weil's proof used the axiom of choice and Henri Cartan furnished a proof which avoided its use. Cartan's proof also establishes the existence and the uniqueness simultaneously. A simplified and complete account of Cartan's argument was given by Alfsen in 1963. The special case of invariant measure for second countable locally compact groups had been shown by Haar in 1933.

Construction of Haar measure

A construction using compact subsets

The following method of constructing Haar measure is essentially the method used by Haar and Weil.
For any subsets with nonempty define to be the smallest number of left translates of that cover . This is not additive on compact sets, though it does have the property that for disjoint compact sets provided that is a sufficiently small open neighborhood of the identity. The idea of Haar measure is to take a sort of limit of as becomes smaller to make it additive on all pairs of disjoint compact sets, though it first has to be normalized so that the limit is not just infinity. So fix a compact set with non-empty interior and for a compact set define
where the limit is taken over a suitable directed set of open neighborhoods of the identity eventually contained in any given neighborhood; the existence of a directed set such that the limit exists follows using Tychonoff's theorem.
The function is additive on disjoint compact subsets of, which implies that it is a regular content. From a regular content one can construct a measure by first extending to open sets by inner regularity, then to all sets by outer regularity, and then restricting it to Borel sets.

A construction using compactly supported functions

Cartan introduced another way of constructing Haar measure as a Radon measure which is similar to the construction above except that,, and are positive continuous functions of compact support rather than subsets of. In this case we define to be the infimum of numbers such that is less than the linear combination of left translates of for some.
As before we define
The fact that the limit exists takes some effort to prove, though the advantage of doing this is that the proof avoids the use of the axiom of choice and also gives uniqueness of Haar measure as a by-product. The functional extends to a positive linear functional on compactly supported continuous functions and so gives a Haar measure.

A construction using mean values of functions

Von Neumann gave a method of constructing Haar measure using mean values of functions, though it only works for compact groups. The idea is that given a function on a compact group, one can find a convex combination of its left translates that differs from a constant function by at most some small number. Then one shows that as tends to zero the values of these constant functions tend to a limit, which is called the mean value of the function.
For groups that are locally compact but not compact this construction does not give Haar measure as the mean value of compactly supported functions is zero. However something like this does work for almost periodic functions on the group which do have a mean value, though this is not given with respect to Haar measure.

A construction on Lie groups

On an n-dimensional Lie group, Haar measure can be constructed easily as the measure induced by a left-invariant n-form. This was known before Haar's theorem.

The right Haar measure

It can also be proved that there exists a unique right-translation-invariant Borel measure satisfying the above regularity conditions and being finite on compact sets, but it need not coincide with the left-translation-invariant measure. The left and right Haar measures are the same only for so-called unimodular groups. It is quite simple, though, to find a relationship between and.
Indeed, for a Borel set, let us denote by the set of inverses of elements of. If we define
then this is a right Haar measure. To show right invariance, apply the definition:
Because the right measure is unique, it follows that is a multiple of and so
for all Borel sets, where is some positive constant.

The modular function

The left translate of a right Haar measure is a right Haar measure. More precisely, if is a right Haar measure, then
is also right invariant. Thus, by uniqueness up to a constant scaling factor of the Haar measure, there exists a function from the group to the positive reals, called the Haar modulus, modular function or modular character, such that for every Borel set
Since right Haar measure is well-defined up to a positive scaling factor, this equation shows the modular function is independent of the choice of right Haar measure in the above equation.
The modular function is a continuous group homomorphism into the multiplicative group of positive real numbers. A group is called unimodular if the modular function is identically, or, equivalently, if the Haar measure is both left and right invariant. Examples of unimodular groups are abelian groups, compact groups, discrete groups, semisimple Lie groups and connected nilpotent Lie groups. An example of a non-unimodular group is the group of affine transformations
on the real line. This example shows that a solvable Lie group need not be unimodular.
In this group a left Haar measure is given by, and a right Haar measure by.

Measures on homogeneous spaces

If the locally compact group acts transitively on a homogeneous space, one can ask if this space has an invariant measure, or more generally a semi-invariant measure with the property that for some character of. A necessary and sufficient condition for the existence of such a measure is that the restriction is equal to, where and are the modular functions of and respectively.
In particular an invariant measure on exists if and only if the modular function of restricted to is the modular function of.

Example

If is the group and is the subgroup of upper triangular matrices, then the modular function of is nontrivial but the modular function of is trivial. The quotient of these cannot be extended to any character of, so the quotient space does not have even a semi-invariant measure.

Haar integral

Using the general theory of Lebesgue integration, one can then define an integral for all Borel measurable functions on . This integral is called the Haar integral. If is a left Haar measure, then
for any Haar integrable function on. This is immediate for indicator functions, being essentially the definition of left invariance.

Examples

In the same issue of Annals of Mathematics and immediately after Haar's paper, the Haar theorem was used to solve Hilbert's fifth problem for compact groups by John von Neumann.
Unless is a discrete group, it is impossible to define a countably additive left-invariant regular measure on all subsets of, assuming the axiom of choice, according to the theory of non-measurable sets.

Abstract harmonic analysis

The Haar measures are used in harmonic analysis on locally compact groups, particularly in the theory of Pontryagin duality. To prove the existence of a Haar measure on a locally compact group it suffices to exhibit a left-invariant Radon measure on.

Mathematical statistics

In mathematical statistics, Haar measures are used for prior measures, which are prior probabilities for compact groups of transformations. These prior measures are used to construct admissible procedures, by appeal to the characterization of admissible procedures as Bayesian procedures by Wald. For example, a right Haar measure for a family of distributions with a location parameter results in the Pitman estimator, which is best equivariant. When left and right Haar measures differ, the right measure is usually preferred as a prior distribution. For the group of affine transformations on the parameter space of the normal distribution, the right Haar measure is the Jeffreys prior measure. Unfortunately, even right Haar measures sometimes result in useless priors, which cannot be recommended for practical use, like other methods of constructing prior measures that avoid subjective information.
Another use of Haar measure in statistics is in conditional inference, in which the sampling distribution of a statistic is conditioned on another statistic of the data. In invariant-theoretic conditional inference, the sampling distribution is conditioned on an invariant of the group of transformations. The result of conditioning sometimes depends on the order in which invariants are used and on the choice of a maximal invariant, so that by itself a statistical principle of invariance fails to select any unique best conditional statistic ; at least another principle is needed.
For non-compact groups, statisticians have extended Haar-measure results using amenable groups.

Weil's converse theorem

In 1936 Weil proved a converse to Haar's theorem, by showing that if a group has a left invariant measure for which one can define a convolution product, then one can define a topology on the group, and the completion of the group is locally compact and the given measure is essentially the same as the Haar measure on this completion.