In mathematics, a Loeb space is a type of
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 ...
introduced by using
nonstandard analysis
The history of calculus is fraught with philosophical debates about the meaning and logical validity of fluxions or infinitesimal numbers. The standard way to resolve these debates is to define the operations of calculus using epsilonâdelt ...
.
Construction
Loeb's construction starts with a
finitely additive
In mathematics, an additive set function is a function mapping sets to numbers, with the property that its value on a union of two disjoint sets equals the sum of its values on these sets, namely, \mu(A \cup B) = \mu(A) + \mu(B). If this additivity ...
map
from an
internal
Internal may refer to:
* Internality as a concept in behavioural economics
*Neijia, internal styles of Chinese martial arts
*Neigong
Neigong, also spelled ''nei kung'', ''neigung'', or ''nae gong'', refers to any of a set of Chinese breathing, ...
algebra
of sets to the
nonstandard reals. Define
to be given by the standard part of
, so that
is a finitely additive map from
to the
extended reals
In mathematics, the affinely extended real number system is obtained from the real number system \R by adding two infinity elements: +\infty and -\infty, where the infinities are treated as actual numbers. It is useful in describing the algebra o ...
. Even if
is a nonstandard
-algebra, the algebra
need not be an ordinary
-algebra as it is not usually closed under countable unions. Instead the algebra
has the property that if a set in it is the union of a countable family of elements of
, then the set is the union of a finite number of elements of the family, so in particular any finitely additive map (such as
) from
to the extended reals is automatically countably additive. Define
to be the
-algebra generated by
. Then by
Carathéodory's extension theorem
In measure theory, CarathĂ©odory's extension theorem (named after the mathematician Constantin CarathĂ©odory) states that any pre-measure defined on a given ring of subsets ''R'' of a given set ''Ω'' can be extended to a measure on the Ï ...
the measure
on ''
'' extends to a countably additive measure on
, called a Loeb measure.
References
*
*
*{{cite journal , last=Loeb , first=Peter A. , title=Conversion from nonstandard to standard measure spaces and applications in probability theory , jstor=1997222 , mr=0390154 , year=1975 , journal=
Transactions of the American Mathematical Society
The ''Transactions of the American Mathematical Society'' is a monthly peer-reviewed scientific journal of mathematics published by the American Mathematical Society. It was established in 1900. As a requirement, all articles must be more than 15 ...
, issn=0002-9947 , volume=211 , pages=113â22 , doi=10.2307/1997222 , via=
JSTOR
JSTOR (; short for ''Journal Storage'') is a digital library founded in 1995 in New York City. Originally containing digitized back issues of academic journals, it now encompasses books and other primary sources as well as current issues of j ...
, doi-access=free
External links
Home page of Peter Loeb
Measure theory
Nonstandard analysis