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It is known that every Hilbert space admits an orthonormal basis, but is it true that an inner product space which admits an orthonormal basis is necessarily complete as a metric space? Can you give a counter-example?

Bernard
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2 Answers2

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The space $l_0$ of sequences with at most finitely many non-zero terms (as a subspace of $l^{2}$) with the usual basis elements $(1,0,0...),(0,1,0...)...$ is incomplete.

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In a Hilbert space, with orthonormal basis $\{e_n,n=1,2,3,\dots\}$, let $X$ be the set of finite linear combinations $\sum t_n e_n$. This will be an incomplete inner product space, and $e_n$ is still a complete orthonormal set.

GEdgar
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