Definition
The Lorentz space on a measure space 
 is the space of complex-valued measurable functions 
 on X such that the following quasinorm is finite

where 
 and 
.  Thus, when 
,

and, when 
,

It is also conventional to set 
.
Decreasing rearrangements
The quasinorm is invariant under rearranging the values of the function 
, essentially by definition.  In particular, given a complex-valued measurable function 
 defined on a measure space, 
, its decreasing rearrangement function, 
 can be defined as

where 
 is the so-called distribution function of 
, given by

Here, for notational convenience, 
 is defined to be 
.
The two functions 
 and 
 are equimeasurable, meaning that

where 
 is the Lebesgue measure on the real line. The related symmetric decreasing rearrangement function, which is also equimeasurable with 
, would be defined on the real line by

Given these definitions, for 
 and 
, the Lorentz quasinorms are given by

Lorentz sequence spaces
When 
 (the counting measure on 
), the resulting Lorentz space is a sequence space.  However, in this case it is convenient to use different notation.
Definition.
For 
 (or 
 in the complex case), let 
 denote the p-norm for 
 and 
 the ∞-norm. Denote by 
 the Banach space of all sequences with finite p-norm. Let 
 the Banach space of all sequences satisfying 
, endowed with the ∞-norm. Denote by 
 the normed space of all sequences with only finitely many nonzero entries. These spaces all play a role in the definition of the Lorentz sequence spaces 
 below.
Let 
 be a sequence of positive real numbers satisfying 
, and define the norm 
. The Lorentz sequence space
 is defined as the Banach space of all sequences where this norm is finite. Equivalently, we can define 
 as the completion of 
 under 
.
Properties
The Lorentz spaces are genuinely generalisations of the 
 spaces in the sense that, for any 
, 
, which follows from Cavalieri's principle. Further, 
 coincides with weak 
. They are quasi-Banach spaces (that is, quasi-normed spaces which are also complete) and are normable for 
 and 
. When 
, 
 is equipped with a norm, but it is not possible to define a norm equivalent to the quasinorm of 
, the weak 
 space.  As a concrete example that the triangle inequality fails in 
, consider

whose 
 quasi-norm equals one, whereas the quasi-norm of their sum 
 equals four.
The space 
 is contained in 
 whenever 
.  The Lorentz spaces are real interpolation spaces between 
 and 
.
Hölder's inequality
 where 
, 
, 
, and 
.
Dual space
If 
 is a nonatomic σ-finite measure space, then 
(i) 
 for 
, or 
; 
(ii) 
 for 
, or 
; 
(iii) 
 for 
. 
Here 
 for 
, 
 for 
, and 
.
Atomic decomposition
The following are equivalent for 
. 
 (i) 
. 
 (ii) 
 where 
 has disjoint support, with measure 
, on which 
 almost everywhere, and 
. 
 (iii) 
 almost everywhere, where 
 and 
.
 (iv) 
 where 
 has disjoint support 
, with nonzero measure, on which 
 almost everywhere, 
 are positive constants, and 
.
 (v) 
 almost everywhere, where 
.