from wikipedia CokernelMain article: CokernelA subtler invariant of a linear transformation is the cokernel, which is defined as
This is the dual notion to the kernel: just as the kernel is a subspace of the domain, the co-kernel is a quotient space of the target. Formally, one has the exact sequence
These can be interpreted thus: given a linear equation f(v) = w to solve,
- the kernel is the space of solutions to the homogeneous equation f(v) = 0, and its dimension is the number of degrees of freedom in a solution, if it exists;
The dimension of the co-kernel and the dimension of the image (the rank) add up to the dimension of the target space. For finite dimensions, this means that the dimension of the quotient spaceW / f(V) is the dimension of the target space minus the dimension of the image.
- the co-kernel is the space of constraints that must be satisfied if the equation is to have a solution, and its dimension is the number of constraints that must be satisfied for the equation to have a solution.
As a simple example, consider the mapgiven by f(x,y) = (0,y). Then for an equation f(x,y) = (a,b) to have a solution, we must have a = 0 (one constraint), and in that case the solution space is (x,b), or equivalently stated, (0,b) + (x,0), (one degree of freedom). The kernel may be expressed as the subspace (x,0) < V: the value of x is the freedom in a solution – while the cokernel may be expressed via the map
given a vector (a,b), the value of a is the obstruction to there being a solution.
An example illustrating the infinite-dimensional case is afforded by the mapwith b1 = 0 and bn + 1 = an for n > 0. Its image consists of all sequences with first element 0, and thus its cokernel consists of the classes of sequences with identical first element. Thus, whereas its kernel has dimension 0 (it maps only the zero sequence to the zero sequence), its co-kernel has dimension 1. Since the domain and the target space are the same, the rank and the dimension of the kernel add up to the same sum as the rank and the dimension of the co-kernel (
), but in the infinite-dimensional case it cannot be inferred that the kernel and the co-kernel of an endomorphism have the same dimension (
). The reverse situation obtains for the map
with cn = an + 1. Its image is the entire target space, and hence its co-kernel has dimension 0, but since it maps all sequences in which only the first element is non-zero to the zero sequence, its kernel has dimension 1.
Sunday, January 01, 2012
cokernel infinite case!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment