An absolutely continuous function , where
, is a function such that
for every
there is a
for which
whenever
are finitely many subintervals whose interiors are pairwise
disjoint sets and
. The notation
denotes the class of such functions.
Equivalently, has a derivative
almost everywhere,
this derivative is Lebesgue integrable,
and
The equality must hold for every , and the integral is a Lebesgue
integral. This characterization is a form of the fundamental
theorems of calculus.
Every Lipschitz function on is absolutely continuous, and every absolutely continuous
function has uniform continuity. Neither converse
holds. For example,
is absolutely continuous but is not a Lipschitz
function on
. The Cantor function
has uniform continuity but is not absolutely
continuous.