[Math] Weakly sequentially continuous operators in Hilbert space are norm continuous.

hilbert-spacesweak-convergence

Suppose I have a linear operator T from a Hilbert space H to itself, and T maps every weak convergent sequence to a weak convergent sequence. Show that T is continuous.

I feel that this statement will not be true for general Banach spaces. Weak convergence in a Hilbert space means the inner product of Xn and u converges to the inner product of X and u for any u in H. But I don't see how it helps me in proving the claim. And I think closed graph theorem will not help either, since the assumption is about strong convergence.

Any help is appreciated.

Best Answer

Hint:

  1. Try proving the contrapositive. If $T$ is not continuous, show that it maps some bounded sequence $\{x_n\}$ to a sequence $\{T x_n\}$ with $\|T x_n\| \to \infty$. Passing to a subsequence and rescaling, we can even assume $\|x_n\| \to 0$, and in particular $x_n \to 0$ weakly.

  2. Every weakly convergent sequence is bounded. (This comes from the uniform boundedness principle.)

  3. Conclude that if $T$ is not continuous, it maps some weakly convergent sequence to a weakly non-convergent sequence.