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Measure Of Non-compactness




The underlying idea is the following: a bounded set can be covered by a single ball of some radius. Sometimes several balls of a smaller radius can also cover the set. A compact set in fact can be covered by finitely many balls of arbitrary small radius, because it is Totally Bounded . So one could ask: what is the smallest radius that allows to cover the set with finitely many balls?

Formally, we start with a Metric Space ''M'' and a subset ''X''. The ball measure of non-compactness is defined as
:α(''X'') = Inf {''r'' > 0 : there exist finitely many balls of radius ''r'' which cover ''X''}
and the Kuratowski measure of non-compactness is defined as
:β(''X'') = inf {''d'' > 0 : there exist finitely many sets of diameter at most ''d'' which cover ''X''}

Since a ball of radius ''r'' has diameter at most 2''r'', we have α(''X'') ≤ β(''X'') ≤ 2α(''X'').

The two measures α and β share many properties, and we will use γ in the sequel to denote either one of them. Here is a collection of facts:
  • ''X'' is bounded if and only if γ(''X'') < ∞.

  • γ(''X'') = γ(''X''cl), where ''X''cl denotes the Closure of ''X''.

  • If ''X'' is compact, then γ(''X'') = 0. Conversely, if γ(''X'') = 0 and ''X'' is Complete , then ''X'' is compact.

  • γ(''X'' ∪ ''Y'') = max(γ(''X''), γ(''Y'')) for any two subsets ''X'' and ''Y''.

  • γ is continuous with respect to the Hausdorff Distance of sets.


Measures of non-compactness are most commonly used if ''M'' is a Normed Vector Space . In this case, we have in addition: