Orthogonal Complements
Definition
The orthogonal complement
of a subset of an inner product space is the
set of vectors which are orthogonal to every
vector in the subset.
Here is the definition in symbols.
Given an inner product space and a
subset , the orthogonal
complement of is
Notation
We denote the orthogonal complement of by
.
Examples
Complements of lines and planes in
.
If is a line in , then
is the plane containing the origin that is
perpendicular to .
Conversely, if is a plane in
containing the origin, then is the
line containing the origin that is perpendicular
to .
Properties
Suppose is an inner product space.
Given any subset ,
- is a subspace of .
- if , then