TITLE: Prob. 8, Sec. 2.10 in Erwine Kreyszig's INTRODUCTORY FUNCTIONAL ANALYSIS WITH APPLICATIONS: The dual space of $c_0$ is $\ell^1$?
QUESTION [5 upvotes]: Let $c_0$ be the subspace of $\ell^\infty$ consisting of all sequences of (real or complex ) numbers converging to $0$.
How to prove that the dual space of $c_0$ is (isomorphic to) $\ell^1$?

My effort:

Let $f \in c_0^\prime$. Then $f$ is a bounded linear functional with domain $c_0$.
Then, for any $x \colon= (\xi_j)_{j\in \mathbb{N}} \in c_0$, we have
$$x = \sum_{j=1}^\infty \xi_j e_j,$$
where $e_j = (\delta_{ij})$ for each $j \in \mathbb{N}$. Each $e_j \in c_0$.
Then using the boundedness (and the consequent continuity) of $f$, we can conclude that
$$f(x) = \sum_{j=1}^\infty \xi_j f(e_j).$$
So
$$\vert f(x) \vert \leq \sum_{j=1}^\infty \vert \xi_j \vert \ \vert f(e_j) \vert \leq \Vert x \Vert_\infty \sum_{j=1}^\infty \vert f(e_j)\vert, $$
showing that $$\Vert f \Vert \leq \sum_{j=1}^\infty \vert f(e_j)\vert. $$

Is what I've stated so far correct? How to proceed?

REPLY [3 votes]: Salam brother Mahmud,
The procedure is extremely similar to sec 2.10-7 in the Erwin's book (almost copy and paste with slight modifications for the new space $c_0$) and goes as follows.
A Schauder basis (Sec. 2.3 in the Erwin book) for $c_0$ is $(e_k)$ where $e_k=(\delta_{kj})$ has 1 in the kth place and zeros otherwise;
$\begin{matrix}
e_1=(1,0,0,0,\cdots )\\ 
e_2=(0,1,0,0,\cdots )\\ 
e_3=(0,0,1,0,\cdots )\\ 
\vdots 
\end{matrix}$
Then every $x\in c_0$ has a unique representation
$x= \sum_{k=1}^{\infty} \xi _{k} e_k$
We consider any $f\in c'_0$, where $c'_0$ is the dual space of $c_0$. Since $f$ is linear and bounded
$f(x)= \sum_{k=1}^{\infty} \xi _k \gamma _k \quad\text{where}\quad \gamma _k=f(e_k)\quad\quad\cdots \quad\ (1)$
are uniquely determined by $f$.
Consider $x_n=\left(\xi_k^{(n)}\right)$ with
$\xi_{k}^{(n)}=
\left\{\begin{matrix}
\left | \gamma_{k} \right | /\gamma_{k} & \text{if}\ \gamma _{k}\neq 0 \ \text{and} \ k\leq n\\ 
 0 & \text{if}\ \gamma _{k}= 0 \ \text{and} \ k> n
\end{matrix}\right.$
By substitution this into (1) we obtain
$\left | f(x_n) \right |=\sum_{k=1}^{\infty} \xi _k^{(n)}\gamma _k = \sum_{k=1}^{n} \left | \gamma _k \right |\quad\quad\cdots \quad\ (2)$
we also have
$\left | f(x_n) \right |  \leq \left \| f \right \| \underbrace{\left \| x_n \right \|}_{\max_{k} \left | \xi _{k}^{(n)} \right |=1}\quad\quad\cdots \quad\ (3)$
from (2) and (3) we obtain
$\sum_{k=1}^{n} \left | \gamma _{k} \right | \leq \left \| f \right \|\quad\quad\cdots \quad\ (4)$
Since $n$ is arbitrary, letting $n \to \infty $, we obtain
$\sum_{k=1}^{\infty } \left | \gamma _{k} \right | \leq \left \| f \right \|\quad\quad\cdots \quad\ (5)$
Hence $(\gamma_k)\in l^1$.
On the other hand, for every $b=\left ( \beta_k \right )\in l^1$ we can obtain a corresponding bounded linear functional g on $c_0$. In fact, we may define $g$ on $c_0$ by
$g(x)=\sum_{k=1}^{\infty } \xi _k \beta _k$
where $x=(\xi_k)\in c_0$. Then g is linear and boundedness follows from
$ g(x) = \left |\sum  \xi _k \beta _k \right |\leq \sum \left | \xi _k \beta _k \right |\leq \sup_{j}\left | \xi  _j \right | \sum \left | \beta  _k \right |= \left \| x \right \|\cdot \sum \left | \beta _{k} \right |$
(sum from 1 to $\infty$). Hence $g\in c'_0$.
We finally show that the norm of $f$ is the norm on the space $l^1$.
From (1) we have
$\left | f(x) \right | = \left |\sum  \xi _k \gamma _k \right |\leq \sum \left | \xi _k \gamma _k \right |\leq \sup_{j}\left | \xi  _j \right | \sum \left | \beta  _k \right |= \left \| x \right \|\cdot \sum \left | \gamma _{k} \right |$
Taking the supremum over all $x$ of norm 1, we see that
$\left \| f \right \| \leq \sum \left | \gamma _{k} \right |$
From this and (5),
$\left \| f \right \| =  \sum \left | \gamma _{k} \right |$,
which the norm on $l^1$. Hence this formula can be written $\left \| f \right \| = \left \| c \right \|_1$ where $c=(\gamma _j)\in l^1$. IT shows that the bijective linear mapping of $c'_0$ on to $l^1$ defined by $f \mapsto c=(\gamma_j) $ is an isomorphism.