In
mathematics, the Heine–Cantor theorem, named after
Eduard Heine and
Georg Cantor, states that if is a
continuous function between two
metric spaces and , and is
compact, then is
uniformly continuous. An important special case is that every continuous function from a
closed
bounded
interval to the
real numbers is uniformly continuous.
Proof
Suppose that and are two
metric spaces with metrics and , respectively. Suppose further that a function is continuous and is compact. We want to show that is
uniformly continuous, that is, for every positive real number there exists a positive real number such that for all points in the
function domain , implies that .
Consider some positive real number . By
continuity, for any point in the domain , there exists some positive real number such that when , i.e., a fact that is within of implies that is within of .
Let be the
open -neighborhood of , i.e. the
set
Since each point is contained in its own , we find that the collection is an open
cover of . Since is compact, this cover has a finite subcover where . Each of these open sets has an associated radius . Let us now define , i.e. the minimum radius of these open sets. Since we have a finite number of positive radii, this minimum is well-defined and positive. We now show that this works for the definition of uniform continuity.
Suppose that for any two in . Since the sets form an open (sub)cover of our space , we know that must lie within one of them, say . Then we have that . The
triangle inequality then implies that
implying that and are both at most away from . By definition of , this implies that and are both less than . Applying the triangle inequality then yields the desired
For an alternative proof in the case of , a closed interval, see the article
Non-standard calculus.
See also
External links