The continuous primitive integral in the plane

Abstract

An integral is defined on the plane that includes the Henstock--Kurzweil and Lebesgue integrals (with respect to Lebesgue measure). A space of primitives is taken as the set of continuous real-valued functions $F(x,y)$ defined on the extended real plane $[-\infty,\infty]^2$ that vanish when $x$ or $y$ is $-\infty$. With usual pointwise operations this is a Banach space under the uniform norm. The integrable functions and distributions (generalised functions) are those that are the distributional derivative $\partial^2/(\partial x\partial y)$ of this space of primitives. If $f=\partial^2/(\partial x\partial y) F$ then the integral over interval $[a,b]\times [c,d] \subseteq[-\infty,\infty]^2$ is $\int_a^b\int_c^d f=F(a,c)+F(b,d)-F(a,d)-F(b,c)$ and $\int_{-\infty}^\infty \int_{-\infty}^\infty f=F(\infty,\infty)$. The definition then builds in the fundamental theorem of calculus. The Alexiewicz norm is ${\lVert f\rVert}={\lVert F\rVert}_\infty$ where $F$ is the unique primitive of $f$. The space of integrable distributions is then a separable Banach space isometrically isomorphic to the space of primitives. The space of integrable distributions is the completion of both $L^1$ and the space of Henstock--Kurzweil integrable functions. The Banach lattice and Banach algebra structures of the continuous functions in ${\lVert \cdot\rVert}_\infty$ are also inherited by the integrable distributions. It is shown that the dual space are the functions of bounded Hardy--Krause variation. Various tools that make these integrals useful in applications are proved: integration by parts, Hölder inequality, second mean value theorem, Fubini theorem, a convergence theorem, change of variables, convolution. The changes necessary to define the integral in ${\mathbb R}^n$ are sketched out.