[Math] relationship between isometry as defined on metric spaces and those on vector spaces

category-theorydefinitionlinear algebrareal-analysisterminology

I am taking a course on linear algebra and another on real analysis.

  • In linear algebra we defined that two vector spaces are isomorphic if
    there existed a

    bijective and linear map

    between the two vector spaces

  • In real analyis we defined that two metric spaces are isometric if there existed a

    bijective, distance preserving map $d(x,y) = d'(fx, fy)$
    between the two metric spaces

I looked up the definition of isometry online and many sources tell me it is a bijective "structure preserving" map.

Is there some commonality between these so called structures?

Or is it hopeless for me to guess what would be an isomorphism defined between topological spaces, Hilbert spaces or Banach spaces until I see the definitions?

Best Answer

Given two structures of $A,B$ of some kind, you first have to guess what a structure-preserving 'map', i.e. a (homo-) morphism $A \to B$ (from $A$ to $B$) is. For the sake of simplicity, we are going to assume, that a morphism is a function with some special properties (this need not be the case, but it very often is). If you have this, then $A$ is commonly called isomorphic to $B$, if there is an isomorphism $A\to B$.

An isomorphism $f : A\to B$ is a morphism $A\to B$ with an inverse, that is a morphism $g : B\to A$ with $g\circ f = \operatorname{id}_A$ and $f\circ g = \operatorname{id}_B$. Of course, in our case we then have $g = f^{-1}$. So, being an isomorphism implies being bijective. The converse is not generally true, because even if $f$ is a bijective morphism, $f^{-1}$ is not necessarily a morphism too (this is indeed the case for topological spaces and their morphisms), but it is true for example for linear maps.

How do you decide what a morphism should be, i.e. what kind of special properties a map between structures should have? Well, it depends. Sometimes its obvious (vector spaces), sometimes it is not (metric spaces). But in any case, the morphisms should preserve "all" the structure. So vector space morphisms (linear maps) should preserve addition and scalar multiplication and a metric space morphism should preserve the metric.

Unfortunately or maybe interestingly, there are many things you could consider "preserving the metric". One kind of possible morphisms are simply called "distance-preserving", but there are other possibilities (short maps, lipschitz-continuous maps, etc.). Because in this case, we have many notions of morphisms, someone decided to use the term "isometric" in place of "isomorphic".

The general theory dealing with "morphisms between structures" is called "category theory".

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