Needs:
Real Inner Products
Vector Subspaces
Needed by:
Complete Inner Product Decomposition
Subspace Orthogonal Complements
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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 V and a subset UV, the orthogonal complement of V is

{vV|v,u=0 for every uU}

Notation

We denote the orthogonal complement of U by U.

Examples

Complements of lines and planes in R3. If U is a line in R3, then U is the plane containing the origin that is perpendicular to U. Conversely, if U is a plane in R3 containing the origin, then U is the line containing the origin that is perpendicular to U.

Properties

Suppose V is an inner product space. Given any subset UV,
  1. U is a subspace of V.
  2. {0}=V
  3. V={0}
  4. UU{0}
  5. if WU, then WU
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