Vector Subspace

🅟 Apr 15, 2026

  🅤 Jun 20, 2026

Definition 1.

Let $(V, F, \cdot)$ be a vector space. $(W, F, \cdot)$ is a vector subspace of $V$ if it is a vector space and $W \subseteq V$.


Proposition 1.

Let $V$ be a vector space over $F$ and $W \subseteq V$. $W$ is a subspace as soon as:

  1. \[0 \in W.\]
  2. (Closure under addition) For all $x$, $y \in W$,

    \[x + y \in W.\]
  3. (Closure under scalar multiplication) For all $x \in W$ and $\lambda \in F$,

    \[\lambda x \in W.\]

Proposition 2.

Let $V$ be a vector space and $\mathcal{W}$ be a collection of subspaces. Then $\bigcap \mathcal{W}$ is also a subspace.

Proposition 3.

Let $V$ be a vector space and $W$, $W’$ be subspaces. If $W \cup W’$ is a subspace, then either $W \subseteq W’$ or $W’ \subseteq W$.