Pego theorem for Hilbert space-valued functions on compact groups

Abstract

We prove a Hilbert space-valued analogue of Pego's compactness theorem on compact groups. For square-integrable functions taking values in a Hilbert space rather than in the complex numbers, we show that a bounded family is precompact exactly when it is simultaneously well behaved in two complementary senses: its members do not change much under small translations of the group, and their Fourier coefficients decay uniformly across the family. This equivalence holds without restriction when the Hilbert space is finite-dimensional, and it specializes to the known scalar-valued theorem when the Hilbert space is just the complex numbers. We then construct an explicit example showing that the equivalence genuinely breaks down once the Hilbert space is allowed to be infinite-dimensional. To repair this, we introduce a uniform tightness condition and we show that under this extra hypothesis the equivalence is restored regardless of the dimension of the Hilbert space. Along the way we establish the Plancherel isometry, the Hausdorff-Young inequality and its inverse for this vector-valued Fourier transform.