Adjoint operator definition

186 Views Asked by At

Is an adjoint operator only applicable in Hilbert space?

Every definition on the internet is different from my teacher's definition.

My teacher's definition:
$T$ being an element of the continuous linear application from $X$ to $Y$, the adjoint operator of $T$ is $T^*$, element of the continuous linear application between $Y^*$ and $X^*$:

$$T^*:Y^* \,\text{ to }\, X^*\;\; (g \,\text{ to }\, T^*g).$$

So nowhere it talks about Hilbert space. Is the definition lacking something?

1

There are 1 best solutions below

0
On

In Brezis's Functional Analysis the adjoint of a linear operator is defined the following way:
Let $X$, $Y$ be normed spaces and let $L:X \longrightarrow Y$ be a linear bounded operator. The adjoint operator $L^{*}: Y^{*} \longrightarrow X^{*}$ is defined by:
$\langle L^{*},y^{*}\rangle = \langle y^{*}, L \hspace{0.1cm} . \rangle $
With $X^{*}$, $Y^{*}$ the dual spaces of $X$ and $Y$ respectively. It is important to note that $\langle y^{*}, L \hspace{0.1cm} . \rangle $ is a function in $X^{*}$, i.e. $\langle y^{*}, L \hspace{0.1cm} . \rangle : X \longrightarrow \mathbb{R} $.
The notation $ \langle f,x \rangle $ is used for $f(x)$.