Carathéodory's criterion

Carathéodory's criterion is a result in measure theory that was formulated by Greek mathematician Constantin Carathéodory that characterizes when a set is Lebesgue measurable.

Carathéodory's criterion: Let

denote the Lebesgue outer measure on

denotes the power set of

is Lebesgue measurable if and only if

λ

λ

λ

denotes the complement of

is not required to be a measurable set.

[1] The Carathéodory criterion is of considerable importance because, in contrast to Lebesgue's original formulation of measurability, which relies on certain topological properties of

this criterion readily generalizes to a characterization of measurability in abstract spaces.

Indeed, in the generalization to abstract measures, this theorem is sometimes extended to a definition of measurability.

[1] Thus, we have the following definition: If

is an outer measure on a set

denotes the power set of

then a subset

is called

–measurable or Carathéodory-measurable if for every

the equality

The family of all

–measurable subsets is a σ-algebra (so for instance, the complement of a

–measurable set is

–measurable, and the same is true of countable intersections and unions of

–measurable sets) and the restriction of the outer measure

to this family is a measure.

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