If I am correct dot product is an example of inner product on coordinate space.
I wonder if for an arbitrary inner product space with base field being $\mathbb{R}$ or $\mathbb{C}$, there always exists a coordinate system so that the inner product becomes the dot product in coordinate? What is the name of the topic regarding this question?
Thanks and regards!
Best Answer
For finite dimensional spaces, the answer is "yes"; this is a consequence of the Gram-Schmidt orthonormalization process: every finite dimensional inner product space over $\mathbb{R}$ or over $\mathbb{C}$ has an orthonormal basis.
Now let $\mathbf{V}$ be an inner product space, and let $\mathbf{v}_1,\ldots,\mathbf{v}_n$ be an orthonormal basis. Then $T\colon\mathbf{V}\to \mathbf{F}^n$ given by $T\mathbf{v}_i = \mathbf{e}_i$ (i.e., $T$ maps each vector in $\mathbf{V}$ to its coordinate vector relative to the orthonormal basis $\mathbf{v}_1,\ldots,\mathbf{v}_n$) is an invertible linear transformation such that for all $\mathbf{x},\mathbf{y}\in\mathbf{V}$, $\langle \mathbf{x},\mathbf{y}\rangle = T\mathbf{x}\cdot T\mathbf{y}$, where the right hand side is the standard dot product on $\mathbf{F}^n$ ($\mathbf{F}=\mathbb{R}$ or $\mathbb{C}$).