Wrong proof in W. Rudin’s book

measure-theory

I am reading W. Rudin's "Real and Complex Analysis", third edition. Theorem 6.10 (Lebesgue-Radon-Nikodym), page 122, claims (as usual) that the unique decomposition of $\lambda$ and $\lambda_a<<\mu\Longrightarrow d\lambda_a/d\mu\in L^{1}(\mu)$ under the assumption that $\mu$ is sigma-finite. The proof heavily uses instead the assumption that $\lambda$ is finite (without explaining clearly to me at the end how to generalize to the infinite case) and although I red the proof several times I do not see at which point the sigma-finiteness of $\mu$ is used. The entire proof seems instead relying on the sigma-finiteness of $\lambda$. Also, after the proof the classical counterexample of $\mu$ the Lebesgue measure on $(0,1)$ and $\lambda$ the counting measure is given, but again by switching the role of the two measures, i.e. showing that $\mu<<\lambda$ does not imply $d\mu/d\lambda\in L^{1}(\lambda)$.

Maybe I am confused by some triviality, but the hypotheses seem clear: $\lambda$ is general and $\mu$ sigma-finite, but $\lambda$ is assumed finite in the proof, while I do not see where sigma-finiteness of $\mu$ is needed.

By the way I do not see mistakes in the argument, but clearly there must be something wrong, because the statement is proved by not using a crucial hypothesis, which we know we can not remove.

Best Answer

The full set of assumptions in Th.10 of Rudin are:

  1. $\mu$ be a positive $\sigma$-finite measure on a $\sigma$-algebra $\mathfrak{M}$ in a set $X$,
  2. and let $\lambda$ be a complex measure on $\mathfrak{M}$.

Recall that complex measures $\lambda$, by virtue of taking values on $\mathbb{C}$ are finite, and consequently they also have finite total variation $|\lambda(X)|\leq|\lambda|(X)<\infty$ (See page 16, and page 118 of your textbook).

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