There is,up to a positive multiplicative constant, a uniquecountably additive, nontrivial measure on the Borel subsets of satisfying the following properties:
The measure is left-translation-invariant: for every and all Borel sets.
The measure is finite on every compact set: for all compact.
Such a measure on is called aleft Haar measure. It can be shown as a consequence of the above properties that is nontrivial if and only if for every non-empty open subset. In particular, if is compact then is finite and positive, so we can uniquely specify a left Haar measure on by adding the normalization condition.
In complete analogy, one can also prove the existence and uniqueness of aright Haar measure on. The two measures need not coincide.
Some authors define a Haar measure onBaire sets rather than Borel sets. This makes the regularity conditions unnecessary as Baire measures are automatically regular.Halmos[3] uses the nonstandard term "Borel set" for elements of the-ring generated by compact sets, and defines Haar measures on these sets.
The left Haar measure satisfies the inner regularity condition for all-finite Borel sets, but may not be inner regular forall Borel sets. For example, the product of theunit circle (with its usual topology) and thereal line with thediscrete topology is a locally compact group with theproduct topology and a Haar measure on this group is not inner regular for the closed subset. (Compact subsets of this vertical segment are finite sets and points have measure, so the measure of any compact subset of this vertical segment is. But, using outer regularity, one can show the segment has infinite measure.)
The existence and uniqueness (up to scaling) of a left Haar measure was first proven in full generality byAndré Weil.[4] Weil's proof used theaxiom of choice andHenri Cartan furnished a proof that avoided its use.[5] Cartan's proof also establishes the existence and the uniqueness simultaneously. A simplified and complete account of Cartan's argument was given byAlfsen in 1963.[6] The special case of invariant measure forsecond-countable locally compact groups had been shown by Haar in 1933.[1]
If is adiscrete group, then the compact subsets coincide with the finite subsets, and a (left and right invariant) Haar measure on is thecounting measure.
The Haar measure on the topological group that takes the value on the interval is equal to the restriction ofLebesgue measure to the Borel subsets of. This can be generalized to
In order to define a Haar measure on thecircle group, consider the function from onto defined by. Then can be defined bywhere is the Lebesgue measure on. The factor is chosen so that.
If is the group ofpositive real numbers under multiplication then a Haar measure is given byfor any Borel subset of positive real numbers.For example, if is taken to be an interval, then we find. Now we let the multiplicative group act on this interval by a multiplication of all its elements by a number, resulting in being the interval Measuring this new interval, we find
If is the group of nonzero real numbers with multiplication as operation, then a Haar measure is given byfor any Borel subset of the nonzero reals.
For thegeneral linear group, any left Haar measure is a right Haar measure and one such measure is given bywhere denotes the Lebesgue measure on identified with the set of all-matrices. This follows from thechange of variables formula.
Generalizing the previous three examples, if the group is represented as an open submanifold of withsmooth group operations, then a left Haar measure on is given by, where is the group identity element of, is theJacobian determinant of left multiplication by at, and is the Lebesgue measure on. This follows from thechange of variables formula. A right Haar measure is given in the same way, except with being the Jacobian of right multiplication by.
For theorthogonal group, its Haar measure can be constructed as follows (as the distribution of a random variable). First sample, that is, a matrix with all entries being IID samples of the normal distribution with mean zero and variance one. Next useGram–Schmidt process on the matrix; the resulting random variable takes values in and it is distributed according to the probability Haar measure on that group.[7] Since thespecial orthogonal group is an open subgroup of the restriction of Haar measure of to gives a Haar measure on (in random variable terms this means conditioning the determinant to be 1, an event of probability 1/2).
The same method as for can be used to construct the Haar measure on theunitary group. For thespecial unitary group (which has measure 0 in), its Haar measure can be constructed as follows. First sample from the Haar measure (normalized to one, so that it's a probability distribution) on, and let, where may be any one of the angles, then independently sample from the uniform distribution on. Then is distributed as the Haar measure on.
Let be the set of all affine linear transformations of the form for some fixed with Associate with the operation offunction composition, which turns into a non-abelian group. can be identified with the right half plane under which the group operation becomes A left-invariant Haar measure (respectively, a right-invariant Haar measure) on is given byandfor any Borel subset of This is because if is an open subset then for fixed,integration by substitution gives while for fixed,
On anyLie group of dimension a left Haar measure can be associated with any non-zero left-invariant-form, as theLebesgue measure; and similarly for right Haar measures. This means also that the modular function can be computed, as the absolute value of thedeterminant of theadjoint representation.
Shaded area is one square unit.
A representation of the Haar measure of positive real numbers in terms ofarea under the positive branch of the standard hyperbolaxy = 1 uses Borel sets generated by intervals [a,b],b >a > 0. For example,a = 1 andb =Euler’s number e yields and area equal to log (e/1) = 1. Then for any positive real numberc the area over the interval [ca, cb] equals log (b/a) so the area is invariant under multiplication by positive real numbers. Note that the area approaches infinity both asa approaches zero andb gets large. Use of this Haar measure to define a logarithm function anchorsa at 1 and considers area over an interval in [b,1], with 0 <b < 1, asnegative area. In this way the logarithm can take any real value even though measure is always positive or zero.
If is the group of non-zeroquaternions, then can be seen as an open subset of. A Haar measure is given bywhere denotes the Lebesgue measure in and is a Borel subset of.
If is the additive group of-adic numbers for a prime, then a Haar measure is given by letting have measure, where is the ring of-adic integers.
The following method of constructing Haar measure is essentially the method used by Haar and Weil.
For any subsets with nonempty define to be the smallest number of left translates of that cover (so this is a non-negative integer or infinity). This is not additive on compact sets, though it does have the property that for disjoint compact sets provided that is a sufficiently small open neighborhood of the identity (depending on and). The idea of Haar measure is to take a sort of limit of as becomes smaller to make it additive on all pairs of disjoint compact sets, though it first has to be normalized so that the limit is not just infinity. So fix a compact set with non-empty interior (which exists as the group is locally compact) and for a compact set define
where the limit is taken over a suitable directed set of open neighborhoods of the identity eventually contained in any given neighborhood; the existence of a directed set such that the limit exists follows usingTychonoff's theorem.
The function is additive on disjoint compact subsets of, which implies that it is a regularcontent. From a regular content one can construct a measure by first extending to open sets by inner regularity, then to all sets by outer regularity, and then restricting it to Borel sets. (Even for open sets, the corresponding measure need not be given by the lim sup formula above. The problem is that the function given by the lim sup formula is not countably subadditive in general and in particular is infinite on any set without compact closure, so is not an outer measure.)
A construction using compactly supported functions
Cartan introduced another way of constructing Haar measure as aRadon measure (a positive linear functional on compactly supported continuous functions), which is similar to the construction above except that,, and are positive continuous functions of compact support rather than subsets of. In this case we define to be the infimum of numbers such that is less than the linear combination of left translates of for some.As before we define
.
The fact that the limit exists takes some effort to prove, though the advantage of doing this is that the proof avoids the use of the axiom of choice and also gives uniqueness of Haar measure as a by-product. The functional extends to a positive linear functional on compactly supported continuous functions and so gives a Haar measure. (Note that even though the limit is linear in, the individual terms are not usually linear in.)
Von Neumann gave a method of constructing Haar measure using mean values of functions, though it only works for compact groups. The idea is that given a function on a compact group, one can find aconvex combination (where) of its left translates that differs from a constant function by at most some small number. Then one shows that as tends to zero the values of these constant functions tend to a limit, which is called the mean value (or integral) of the function.
For groups that are locally compact but not compact this construction does not give Haar measure as the mean value of compactly supported functions is zero. However something like this does work foralmost periodic functions on the group which do have a mean value, though this is not given with respect to Haar measure.
On ann-dimensional Lie group, Haar measure can be constructed easily as the measure induced by a left-invariantn-form. This was known before Haar's theorem.
It can also be proved that there exists a unique (up to multiplication by a positive constant) right-translation-invariant Borel measure satisfying the above regularity conditions and being finite on compact sets, but it need not coincide with the left-translation-invariant measure. The left and right Haar measures are the same only for so-calledunimodular groups (see below). It is quite simple, though, to find a relationship between and.
Indeed, for a Borel set, let us denote by the set of inverses of elements of. If we define
then this is a right Haar measure. To show right invariance, apply the definition:
Because the right measure is unique, it follows that is a multiple of and so
for all Borel sets, where is some positive constant.
Theleft translate of a right Haar measure is a right Haar measure. More precisely, if is a right Haar measure, then for any fixed choice of a group elementg,
is also right invariant. Thus, by uniqueness up to a constant scaling factor of the Haar measure, there exists a function from the group to the positive reals, called theHaar modulus,modular function ormodular character, such that for every Borel set
Since right Haar measure is well-defined up to a positive scaling factor, this equation shows the modular function is independent of the choice of right Haar measure in the above equation.
on the real line. This example shows that asolvable Lie group need not be unimodular.In this group a left Haar measure is given by, and a right Haar measure by.
If the locally compact group acts transitively on ahomogeneous space, one can ask if this space has an invariant measure, or more generally a semi-invariant measure with the property that for some character of. A necessary and sufficient condition for the existence of such a measure is that the restriction is equal to, where and are the modular functions of and respectively.[8]In particular an invariant measure on exists if and only if the modular function of restricted to is the modular function of.
If is the group and is the subgroup of upper triangular matrices, then the modular function of is nontrivial but the modular function of is trivial. The quotient of these cannot be extended to any character of, so the quotient space (which can be thought of as 1-dimensionalreal projective space) does not have even a semi-invariant measure.
Using the general theory ofLebesgue integration, one can then define an integral for all Borel measurable functions on. This integral is called theHaar integral and is denoted as:
where is the Haar measure.
One property of a left Haar measure is that, letting be an element of, the following is valid:
for any Haar integrable function on. This is immediate forindicator functions:
which is essentially the definition of left invariance.
Unless is a discrete group, it is impossible to define a countably additive left-invariant regular measure onall subsets of, assuming theaxiom of choice, according to the theory ofnon-measurable sets.
The Haar measures are used inharmonic analysis on locally compact groups, particularly in the theory ofPontryagin duality.[10][11][12] To prove the existence of a Haar measure on a locally compact group it suffices to exhibit a left-invariantRadon measure on.
In mathematical statistics, Haar measures are used for prior measures, which areprior probabilities for compact groups of transformations. These prior measures are used to constructadmissible procedures, by appeal to the characterization of admissible procedures asBayesian procedures (or limits of Bayesian procedures) byWald. For example, a right Haar measure for a family of distributions with alocation parameter results in thePitman estimator, which isbestequivariant. When left and right Haar measures differ, the right measure is usually preferred as a prior distribution. For the group of affine transformations on the parameter space of the normal distribution, the right Haar measure is theJeffreys prior measure.[13] Unfortunately, even right Haar measures sometimes result in useless priors, which cannot be recommended for practical use, like other methods of constructing prior measures that avoid subjective information.[14]
Another use of Haar measure in statistics is inconditional inference, in which the sampling distribution of a statistic is conditioned on another statistic of the data. In invariant-theoretic conditional inference, the sampling distribution is conditioned on an invariant of the group of transformations (with respect to which the Haar measure is defined). The result of conditioning sometimes depends on the order in which invariants are used and on the choice of amaximal invariant, so that by itself astatistical principle of invariance fails to select any unique best conditional statistic (if any exist); at least another principle is needed.
For non-compact groups, statisticians have extended Haar-measure results usingamenable groups.[15]
In 1936,André Weil proved a converse (of sorts) to Haar's theorem, by showing that if a group has a left invariant measure with a certainseparating property,[3] then one can define a topology on the group, and the completion of the group is locally compact and the given measure is essentially the same as the Haar measure on this completion.
^abHalmos, Paul R. (1950).Measure theory. New York: Springer Science+Business Media. p. 219-220.ISBN978-1-4684-9442-6.{{cite book}}:ISBN / Date incompatibility (help)
^Weil, André (1940),L'intégration dans les groupes topologiques et ses applications, Actualités Scientifiques et Industrielles, vol. 869, Paris: Hermann
^Banaszczyk, Wojciech (1991).Additive subgroups of topological vector spaces. Lecture Notes in Mathematics. Vol. 1466. Berlin: Springer-Verlag. pp. viii+178.ISBN3-540-53917-4.MR1119302.
^Yurii I. Lyubich.Introduction to the Theory of Banach Representations of Groups. Translated from the 1985 Russian-language edition (Kharkov (Kharkiv), Ukraine). Birkhäuser Verlag. 1988.