In mathematics, a p-adic distribution is an analogue of ordinary distributions

Distribution (mathematics)

In mathematical analysis, distributions are objects that generalize functions. Distributions make it possible to differentiate functions whose derivatives do not exist in the classical sense. In particular, any locally integrable function has a distributional derivative...

 (i.e. generalized functions) that takes values in a ring of p-adic numbers

P-adic number

In mathematics, and chiefly number theory, the p-adic number system for any prime number p extends the ordinary arithmetic of the rational numbers in a way different from the extension of the rational number system to the real and complex number systems...

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Definition

If X is a topological space

Topological space

Topological spaces are mathematical structures that allow the formal definition of concepts such as convergence, connectedness, and continuity. They appear in virtually every branch of modern mathematics and are a central unifying notion...

, a distribution on X with values in an abelian group

Abelian group

In abstract algebra, an abelian group, also called a commutative group, is a group in which the result of applying the group operation to two group elements does not depend on their order . Abelian groups generalize the arithmetic of addition of integers...

 G is a finitely additive function from the compact

Compact space

In mathematics, specifically general topology and metric topology, a compact space is an abstract mathematical space whose topology has the compactness property, which has many important implications not valid in general spaces...

 open subsets of X to G. Equivalently, if we define the space of test functions to be the locally constant and compactly supported integer-valued functions, then a distribution is an additive map from test functions to G. This is formally similar to the usual definition of distributions, which are continuous linear maps from a space of test functions on a manifold to the real numbers.

p-adic measures

A p-adic measure is a special case of a p-adic distribution, analogous to a measure on a measurable space. A p-adic distribution taking values in a normed space is called a p-adic measure if the values on compact open subsets are bounded.