31 Theory
Highlights of this Chapter: we prove that the Riemann/Darboux integral satisfies our axioms of integration, and thus is truly an integral. We then use this construction to prove useful facts about the integral: includeing that the integral is a linear map, and power series can be integrated term by term within their radius of convergence.
Remark 31.1. Because the definitions of the Riemann and Darboux integral are equivalent, we are free to use whichever we please in deriving properties of this integral. While each definition has its own strengths, the formulation of Darboux will provide shorter proofs the majority of the time.
31.1 Verifying the Axioms
Theorem 31.1 (The Darboux Integral and Constants) Let
Proof. For any partition
Theorem 31.2 (The Darboux Integral and Inequality) Let
Proof. The constraint
Theorem 31.3 (The Darboux Integral and Subdivision) Let
Proof. First, assume that
And, by the definitions of upper and lower sums, for each we know
and the same argument applies to
Next we assume integrability on the two subintervals, and prove integrability on the whole interval.
Proof. Let
Thus,
So, we see that integrability on
Proof. Let
Putting all of these together, we get both lower and upper estimates for the sum of the integrals over the subdivision:
And concatenating these inequalities gives the overall bound, for any arbitrary partition
Thus, the sum of these integrals lies between the upper and lower sum of
Phew! We’ve successfully verified all three axioms for the Darboux integral. Taken together, these prove that our construction really is an integral!
Corollary 31.1 The equality of upper and lower sums satisfies the axioms of integration, and thus the Darboux Integral really does define an integral.
31.2 Integrability
Now, we show that our constructed integral is actually interesting - that all continuous functions are integrable!
Theorem 31.4 (Continuous
Proof. Let
As
Now, choose a partition
Since
Using this to bound our sum, we see
Thus,
But the Darboux integral allows us to integrate even more things than the continuous functions. For example, it is quite straightforward to prove that all monotone functions are integrable (even those with many discontinuities!)
Theorem 31.5 (Monotone
Proof. Without loss of generality let
Let
Otherwise, let
Since
And, inductively its straightforward to show (via subdivision) that if the domain of a function can be partitioned into finitely many intervals on which it is integrable, than its integrable on the entire thing. Thus, for example piecewise continuous functions are Darboux Integrable. The precise statement and theorem is below.s
Definition 31.1 (Piecewise Integrable Function) A function
Proposition 31.1 (Piecewise Integrable
Proof. We begin with the case that
Now, assume for induction that all functions that are piecewise integrable on intervals with
Set
Because all continuous functions and all monotone functions are integrable, we have the following useful corollary covering most functions usually seen in a calculus course.
Corollary 31.2 All piecewise continuous and piecewise monotone functions with finitely many pieces are integrable.
But monotone functions are even more general than this! A monotone function can have countably many discontinuities. Pursuing this further, there is a precise characterization of Darboux-Integrable functions (which we state, but do not prove).
Theorem 31.6 (Riemann-Lebesgue Integrability Theorem) A function
We do not prove this theorem here (its proof is long, and requires a precise definition of the concept of a measure zero set to even state) nor do we use it in what follows. But it is interesting to note that if one were to prove this theorem, many of the results both above and below follow as rather trivial consequences:
- Continuous functions are bounded (the extreme value theorem) and have empty discontinuity set. Thus they are integrable.
- One can prove that monotone functions can have at most countably many discontinuities, and any countable set has measure zero. Thus monotone functions are integrable.
- Piecewise integrability implies integrability as the overall function is bounded by the max of the bounds on each interval, and the overall discontinuity set is the union of the discontinuity sets (and, the finite union of measure zero sets has measure zero).
- Constant multiples of integrable functions are integrable: multiplying a bounded function by a constant leaves it still bounded, and does not change the discontinuity set.
- Sums of integrable functions are integrable: a sum is bounded by the sum of the bounds for its terms, and its discontinuity set is contained in the union of the discontinuity sets of each term.
31.3 Linearity
Theorem 31.7 (Integrability of Multiples) Let
Proof. Let
For any partition
Doing this for each
Since
Thus,
Exercise 31.1 For practice, provide a proof of this using the Darboux integrability criterion, instead of the definition of the Riemann integral.
We proceed with the same strategy to prove the integrability of a sum of integrable functions: using the limit laws and definitions for finite sums to calculate along the way:
Theorem 31.8 (Integrability of Sums) Let
Proof. Let
Doing this for each
By hypothesis, both
Since both of these limits exist, we can use the limit law for sums to distribute the limit above, and see
Since
Exercise 31.2 For practice, provide a proof of this using the Darboux integrability criterion, instead of the definition of the Riemann integral.
Each of these theorems does two things: it proves something about the space of integrable functions and also about how the integral behaves on this space. Below we rephrase the conclusion of these theorems in the terminology of linear algebra - a result so important it deserves the moniker of “Theorem” itself.
Theorem 31.9 (Linearity of the Riemann/Darboux Integral) For each interval
31.4 Power Series
We now turn to the issue of integrating power series. The theoretical results are in close analogy to the differentiation case: in summary,
- A power series is integrable on the interior of its radius of convergence, and the the antiderivative converges on the same interval
- The antiderivative can be found by antidifferentiating term-by-term.
There are two ways we could try to prove a theorem such as this: one, we could try to mimic the style of the differentiation proof, developing a theory of dominated convergence for the Riemann integral. This succeeds without issue, and is carried out in the following section. But alternatively we could attempt to use the fundamental theorem of calculus to relate this directly to what we already know about differentiation. This turns out to be a shorter and more elementary argument, and while less general (it applies only to power series, not to general series of functions) it is more than sufficient for our purposes, so we give it here.
Theorem 31.10 Let
We will prove this theorem as a sequence of propositions. First, we check that the radius of convergence remains unchanged under term-by-term integration of a series.
Proof. Like for the differentiable case, we prove this here under the assumption that the Ratio test succeeds in computing the radius of convergence for the original series, so for any
We now turn to compute the ratio test for our new series
Since
Now, we turn to the main event: we prove that the term-by-term antiderivative is the integral of the original power series.
Proof. Let
Because term-by-term-differentiation holds within the radius of convergence, for any
Thus,
But
31.5 Dominated Convergence
Now we turn to the development of a more general theory, based on a new Dominated Convergence Theorem for the Riemann integral.
Theorem 31.11 (Dominated Convergence for the Riemann/Darboux Integral) Let
Proof. For a short elementary proof, see https://arxiv.org/pdf/1408.1439.pdf.
Looking back at the original Dominated Convergence for sums, there are some slight differences here: we have to assume the integrability of the limit, and we must give a uniform bound on all the
Remark 31.2. One motivating reason to seek an alternative theory of integration in advanced analysis is to find an integral with a dominated convergence theorem closer to the others we’ve met. Such an integral exists, and was first constructed by Henri Lebesgue in 1905 (but will not concern us here; dominated convergence for the Riemann integral is plenty powerful!)
Again, both series and integrals are defined by limit statements, so this proof is going to require an interchange of limits. Instead of digging all the way down to the foundations and using the Riemann sum definitions to apply Dominated convergence for series (Theorem 21.1), we can save some trouble by directly using Dominated convergence for integrals (Theorem 31.11)
Just as before we first show how the proof goes assuming that we can exchange the sum and integral limits, and then we’ll justify that this is allowed:
Theorem 31.12 (Integration of Power Series) Let
Proof. Let
Now, taking the limit
Now, we need to justify that dominated convergence applies. Theorem 31.11 requires two things: (1) that the limit
Proposition 31.2 If
Proof. If
And, as continuous functions on a closed interval are integrable (Theorem 31.4), it is integrable on
The second requirement requires us to dig into the definition of a power series a bit.
Proposition 31.3 Let
Proof. As
But
Now truly stringing it all together, we see that for each
Remark 31.3. Note we could get by here without invoking the extreme value theorem,but rather just to see
Exercise 31.3 Use the argument above to show that this holds for any