数学分析第四课(从有理数开始构建实数)

Here goes the most important theory, and it is a theorem about real
numbers. This theorem explains the superiority of $\mathbb{R}$.
Theorem There exists an ordered field $\mathbb{R}$ which has the
least-upper-bound property. Moreover, $\mathbb{R}$ contains
$\mathbb{Q}$ as a subfield.

Proof.
Our proof of this theorem is a contruction process of $\mathbb{R}$ from
$\mathbb{Q}$. In order to do it, we need a new concept which called
cuts

1. A cut is by definition, and set $\alpha \subset \mathbb{Q}$ with
   the following properties.

   1. $\alpha$ is not empty, and $\alpha \ne \mathbb{Q}$.

   2. if $p\in \alpha ,q\in \mathbb{Q}$, and $q<p$, then
      $q\in \alpha$.

   3. if $p\in \alpha$, then $p<r$ for some $r\in \alpha$.

   The real numbers $\mathbb{R}$ is just all the $\alpha$ that
   constructed from $\mathbb{Q}$.

2. Define $\alpha <\beta$ to mean: $\alpha$ is a proper subset of
   $\beta$. It means that $\mathbb{R}$ is an ordered set.

3. The ordered set $\mathbb{R}$ has the least-upper-bound
   property.
   Let $A$ be a nonempty subset of $\mathbb{R}$, and assume that
   $\beta \in \mathbb{R}$ is an upper bound of $A$. Definte $\gamma$ to
   be the union of all $\alpha \in A$. To prove $\gamma$ is a cut of
   $\mathbb{Q}$ and $\gamma$ is the least upper bound of $A$ in
   $\mathbb{R}$, we need two steps.

   1. $\gamma$ is a cut.

      1. $\gamma \ne \varnothing$ because $A\ne \varnothing$.
         $\gamma \ne \mathbb{Q}$ because $A$ is bounded by
         $\beta \in \mathbb{R}$.

      2. If $q\in \mathbb{Q}$, $p\in \gamma$, and $q<p$, then
         $q\in \gamma$. It is because that
         $p\in \gamma \to p\in {\alpha }_1$ for some
         ${\alpha }_1\in A$. $q<p\to q\in {\alpha }_1$, hence
         $q\in \gamma$.

      3. For any $p\in \gamma$, we have $p\in \alpha ,\alpha \in A$.
         Because $\alpha$ is a cut of $\mathbb{Q}$, there exists
         $r>p,r\in \alpha$, which means that $\gamma$ doesn’t have a
         largest number in it.

      Thus, $\gamma$ is a cut of $\mathbb{Q}$.

   2. $\gamma$ is a least upper bound of $A$.

      1. It is clear that $\alpha ⩽\gamma$ for every
         $\alpha \in A$.

      2. $\forall \delta (\delta <\gamma )$ means that there exists
         $s\in \gamma ,s\notin \delta$. $s\in \gamma$ indicates that
         $s\in \alpha ,\alpha \in A$. Hence $\delta <\alpha$, and
         $\delta$ is not an upper bound of $A$. This gives the
         desired result: $$\gamma =\sup A$$

4. If $\alpha \in \mathbb{R},\beta \in \mathbb{R}$ we define
   $\alpha +\beta$ to be the set of all sums $r+s$, where
   $r\in \alpha ,s\in \beta$. We define
   0 ∗ = { q ∈ Q ∣ q < 0 } 0^{*}=\{q\in \mathbb{Q}|q<0\} 0∗={q∈Q∣q<0}. We also define
   1 ∗ = { q ∈ Q ∣ q < 1 } 1^{*}=\{q\in \mathbb{Q}|q<1\} 1∗={q∈Q∣q<1}. With these definitions, we can
   prove that $\mathbb{R}$ is an ordered field. However, the whole proof
   of this is pretty trivial. If you want details of this proof, you
   can find it in rudin’s principle of mathematical analysis.

5. What about subfield $\mathbb{Q}$? To answer this question, we have
   to definie a related set ${\mathbb{Q}}^{\ast }$. We associate with each
   $r\in \mathbb{Q}$ the set $r^{\ast }$ which consists of all
   $p\in \mathbb{Q}$ such that $p<r$. It is clear that $r^{\ast }$ is a
   cut. All these $r^{\ast }$ form ${\mathbb{Q}}^{\ast }$. The ordered field
   $\mathbb{Q}$ is isomorphic to the ordered field ${\mathbb{Q}}^{\ast }$.
   The proof of this is also trivial, and we won’t present it here.