Strongly sequentially continuous functions

Given a topological abelian group G, we study the class of strongly sequentially continuous functions on G. Strong sequential continuity is a property intermediate between sequential continuity and uniform sequential continuity, which appeared naturally in the study of smooth functions on Banach spaces. In this paper, we shall mainly concentrate on the gap between strong sequential continuity and uniform sequential continuity. It turns out that if G has some completeness property—for example, if it is completely metrizable—then all strongly sequentially continuous functions on G are uniformly sequentially continuous. On the other hand, we exhibit a large and natural class of groups for which the two notions differ. This class is defined by a property reminiscent of the classical Dirichlet theorem; it includes all dense sugroups of R generated by an increasing sequence of Dirichlet sets, and groups of the form (X, w), where X is a separable Banach space failing the Schur property. Finally, we show that the family of bounded, real-valued strongly sequentially continuous functions on G is a closed subalgebra of l∞(G).