Strong topology (polar topology)


In functional analysis and related areas of mathematics the strong topology is the finest polar topology, the topology with the most open sets, on a dual pair. The coarsest polar topology is called weak topology.

Definition

Let be a dual pair of vector spaces over the field of real or complex numbers. Let us denote by the system of all subsets bounded by elements of in the following sense:
Then the strong topology on is defined as the locally convex topology on generated by the seminorms of the form
In the special case when is a locally convex space, the strong topology on the dual space is defined as the strong topology, and it coincides with the topology of uniform convergence on bounded sets in, i.e. with the topology on generated by the seminorms of the form
where runs over the family of all bounded sets in. The space with this topology is called strong dual space of the space and is denoted by.

Examples