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Unbounded Positive Definite Functions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

James Stewart*
Affiliation:
University of London, London, England; McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario
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Let G be an abelian group, written additively. A complexvalued function ƒ, defined on G, is said to be positive definite if the inequality

1

holds for every choice of complex numbers C1, …, cn and S1, …, sn in G. It follows directly from (1) that every positive definite function is bounded. Weil (9, p. 122) and Raïkov (5) proved that every continuous positive definite function on a locally compact abelian group is the Fourier-Stieltjes transform of a bounded positive measure, thus generalizing theorems of Herglotz (4) (G = Z, the integers) and Bochner (1) (G = R, the real numbers).

If ƒ is a continuous function, then condition (1) is equivalent to the condition that

2

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Mathematical Society 1969

References

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