From Schwartz space to Mellin transform

Abstract

The primary motivation behind this paper is an attempt to provide a thorough explanation of how the Mellin transform arises naturally in a process akin to the construction of the celebrated Gelfand transform. We commence with a study of a class of Schwartz functions $\mathcal{S}(\mathbb{R}_+),$ where $\mathbb{R}_+$ is the set of all positive real numbers. Various properties of this Fr\'echet space are established and what follows is an introduction of the Mellin convolution operator, which turns $\mathcal{S}(\mathbb{R}_+)$ into a commutative Fr\'echet algebra. We provide a simple proof of Mellin-Young convolution inequality and go on to prove that the structure space $\Delta(\mathcal{S}(\mathbb{R}_+),\star)$ (the space of nonzero, linear, continuous and multiplicative functionals $m:\mathcal{S}(\mathbb{R}_+)\longrightarrow \mathbb{R}$) is homeomorphic to $\mathbb{R}.$ Finally, we show that the Mellin transform arises in a process which bears a striking resemblance to the construction of the Gelfand transform.