In Wikipedia, there are three versions of Riesz theorems:

1 The Hilbert space representation theorem for the (continuous) dual space of a Hilbert space;

2 The representation theorem for positive linear functionals on $C_c(X)$, where $X$ is a locally compact Hausdorff space;

3 The representation theorem for the dual of $C_0(X)$, where $X$ is a locally compact Hausdorff space.

I was wondering

  1. if none of the three versions is more general than the others, in the sense that no one can be derived from another?
  2. when two or three of them can coincide?

Thanks and regards!


These are three different theorems and there's no relation between 1) and the others except in the case when $X$ is finite, where all three theorems coincide (since $\ell^2(X)$, $C_0(X)$ and $C_c(X)$ then are the same topological vector space). Note however that $C_0(X)$ and $C_c(X)$ are never Hilbert spaces (unless the locally compact space $X$ is empty or a point), so 2) and 3) can't have a direct relation to 1).

Since positivity implies continuity 2) can be interpreted as characterizing continuous linear functionals on $C_c{(X)}$ as well, and I'm addressing this version below.

The results 2) and 3) are closely related and often 3) is proved as a corollary of 2).

Note that the space $C_c(X)$ is dense in $C_{0}(X)$ with respect to the sup-norm. So a continuous linear functional on $C_c(X)$ (= a signed Radon measure) extends (uniquely) to a continuous linear functional $C_{0}(X)$ (= a signed bounded Radon measure) if and only if it is of bounded variation. Moreover, 2) and 3) coincide if $X$ is compact (and there are also proofs of 3) reducing it to that case).