The weak closure of $C_c(X)$ in $C_b(X)$

banach-spacesfunctional-analysisgeneral-topology

Given a locally compact Hausdorff space $X$, let $C_b(X)$ denote the bounded continuous functions with sup norm and $C_c(X)$ denote the continuous functions with compact support. I was wondering what the closure of $C_c(X)$ looks like in the weak topology i.e. topology induced by $C_b(X)^*$.

I am not sure if this is obvious, but I would appreciate any help on this, thanks!

Best Answer

Due to Hahn-Banach, the closure of a subspace in the weak topology of a normed space is equal to the norm closure. Then it is easy to check (without using the Stone-Cech compactification as in Eric Wofsey's answer) that $\overline{C_c(X)}=C_0(X)$ (the space of all continuous functions which, for all $\varepsilon>0$, are less than $\varepsilon$ outside some compact set). What you technically need is normality of locally compact Hausdorff spaces to find cut-off fuctions.