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Invertibility

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Definition
LinearAlgebra

A Linear Map TL(V,W)T\in \mathscr{L}(V,W) is called invertible or an isomorphism if there is another linear map SL(V,W)S\in\mathscr{L}(V,W) such that ST=IVS\circ T=I_V and TS=IWT\circ S=I_W. We call SS the inverse to TT. We say that the vector spaces VV and WW are isomorphic if there is an isomorphism TL(V,W)T\in\mathscr{L}(V,W), and we use the notation VWV\cong W ### Notation We denote the inverse to a linear map TT to be T1T^{-1}.

The notion of invertibility and isomorphism are telling us when two vector spaces are “essentially the same”. To get a better sense of why this is true we consider the following:

If VV is a finite dimensional vector space with dim(V)=ndim(V)=n, then what this theorem is telling us is that VFnV\cong \mathbb{F}^n If we are trying to solve a problem about VV, then we can try to translate that problem to a problem about Fn\mathbb{F}^n using an isomorphism T:VFnT:V\to\mathbb{F}^n, solve the problem using the techniques we’ve learned in Fn\mathbb{F}^n and then transfer the solution back to V using T1T^{-1}

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