This entry is about closed subsets of a topological space. For other notions of “closed space” see for instance closed manifold.
topology (point-set topology, point-free topology)
see also differential topology, algebraic topology, functional analysis and topological homotopy theory
Basic concepts
fiber space, space attachment
Extra stuff, structure, properties
Kolmogorov space, Hausdorff space, regular space, normal space
sequentially compact, countably compact, locally compact, sigma-compact, paracompact, countably paracompact, strongly compact
Examples
Basic statements
closed subspaces of compact Hausdorff spaces are equivalently compact subspaces
open subspaces of compact Hausdorff spaces are locally compact
compact spaces equivalently have converging subnet of every net
continuous metric space valued function on compact metric space is uniformly continuous
paracompact Hausdorff spaces equivalently admit subordinate partitions of unity
injective proper maps to locally compact spaces are equivalently the closed embeddings
locally compact and second-countable spaces are sigma-compact
Theorems
Analysis Theorems
A subset of a topological space (or more generally a convergence space) is closed if its complement is an open subset, or equivalently if it contains all its limit points. When equipped with the subspace topology, we may call (or its inclusion ) a closed subspace. More abstractly, a subspace of a space is closed if the inclusion map is a closed map.
The collection of closed subsets of a space is closed under arbitrary intersections. If , then the intersection of all closed subsets containing is the smallest closed subset that contains , called the topological closure of , and variously denoted , , , , etc. It follows that implies and , so that forms a Moore closure operator on the power set .
Since closed subsets are closed with respect to finite unions, we have .
A topological closure operator is a Moore closure operator that preserves finite unions ( and ). It is easy to see that all such closure operators come from a topology whose closed sets are the fixed points of .
(There is a lot more to say, about convergence spaces, smooth spaces, schemes, etc.)
Let be a topological space.
A subset is called a closed subset if its complement is an open subset:
graphics grabbed from Vickers 89
If a singleton subset is closed, one says that is a closed point of .
Given any subset , then its topological closure is the smallest closed subset containing :
A subset such that is called a dense subset of .
subsets are closed in a closed subspace precisely if they are closed in the ambient space
(alternative characterization of topological closures)
Let be a topological space and let be a subset of its underlying set. Then a point is contained in the topological closure (def. ) precisely if every open neighbourhood of intersects :
Due to de Morgan duality we may rephrase the definition of the topological closure as follows:
(closure of a finite union is the union of the closures)
For a finite set and a finite set of subsets of a topological space, we have
By lemma we use that a point is in the closure of a set precisely if every open neighbourhood of the point intersects the set.
Hence in one direction
because if every neighbourhood of a point intersects some , then every neighbourhood intersects their union.
The other direction
is equivalent by de Morgan duality to
On left now we have the point for which there exists for each a neighbourhood which does not intersect . Since is finite, the intersection is still an open neighbourhood of , and such that it intersects none of the , hence such that it does not intersect their union. This implis that the given point is contained in the set on the right.
Using classical logic then:
Let be a metric space, regarded as a topological space via its metric topology, and let be a subset. Then the following are equivalent:
is a closed subspace.
For every sequence with elements in , which converges as a sequence in it also converges in .
First assume that is closed and that for some . We need to show that then . Suppose it were not, then . Since by definition this complement is an open subset, it follows that there exists a real number such that the open ball around of radius is still contained in the complement: . But since the sequence is assumed to converge in , this means that there exists such that all are in , hence in . This contradicts the assumption that all are in , and hence we have proved by contradiction that .
Conversely, assume that for all sequences in that converge to some then . We need to show that then is closed, hence that is an open subset, hence that for every we may find a real number such that the open ball around of radius is still contained in . Suppose on the contrary that such did not exist. This would mean that for each with then the intersection is non-empty. Hence then we could choose points in these intersections. These would form a sequence which clearly converges to
the original , and so by assumption we would conclude that , which violates the assumption that . Hence we proved by contradiction is in fact open.
Let be a topological space and let be a subset. Then the topological interior of equals the complement of the topological closure of the complement of :
The relation of closed subspaces to compact subspaces is expressed by the following statements
This mildly amusing curiosity asks how many set-theoretic operations on a topological space are derivable from closure and complementation and applying finite composition. The answer is that at most 14 operations are so derivable (and there are examples showing this number is achievable). As the proofs below indicate, this bare fact has little to do with topology; it has more to do with general Moore closures and how they interact with complements (using classical logic).
Let denote the power set (ordered by inclusion) and the monoid of endofunctions with order defined pointwise. Then and in , with order-preserving and order-reversing. Also
is idempotent.
, i.e., . Applying the order-preserving operation to both sides together with the fact that , this gives
Since , we have also . Applying the order-reversing operation to both sides, we obtain
Combining the two displayed inequalities gives , and then multiplying this on the right by , the proposition follows.
Let be the monoid presented by two generators and subject to the relations , , and . Then , called the Kuratowski monoid, has at most 14 elements.
We may apply an obvious reduction algorithm on the set of words in two letters , in which a word is reduced by replacing any substring by and any substring by an empty substring, so that any word which cannot be further reduced must be alternating in . This leads to a list of 14 words
with any further alternating words reducible by replacing a substring by . Thus each element in the monoid is represented by one of these 14 words.
These 14 words actually name distinct set-theoretic operations for a judicious choice of space ; as a corollary, the Kuratowski monoid has exactly 14 elements. For instance (courtesy of Wikipedia), taking with its standard topology, the orbit of the element under the monoid action consists of 14 distinct elements.
At most 7 operations are possible with interior and closure, corresponding to the covariant Kuratowski operations. Thus there is a 7-element submonoid . Spaces for which the topological action is not injective are of some structural interest; for instance, the spaces for which are the extremally disconnected spaces, whereas spaces for which are those where the open sets are equivalence classes for some equivalence relation (partition spaces). Those for which are discrete spaces.
A more manifestly topological consideration is what happens when we throw joins (or meets) into the mix. Briefly, at most 13 subsets can be obtained by starting with a subset and generating new subsets by taking closures, interiors, and unions; the order structure of these 13 subsets coincides with the free cocompletion of the finite ordered monoid with respect to nonempty joins. Here we must use distributivity of over joins.
For some details on these remarks (and quite a bit more), see Gardner and Jackson, 2008 and Sherman 2004. An example of a non-topological Moore closure where the 14 operations are all distinct is given here.
In locale theory, every open in a locale defines a closed sublocale which is given by the closed nucleus
The idea is that is the part of which does not involve (hence the notation , or any other notation for a complement), and we may identify with when we are looking only away from .
The sublocale is literally a complement of in the lattice of sublocales of , i.e. and as sublocales. Moreover, if is a (sober) topological space regarded as a locale, then the locale is also spatial, and so is , corresponding exactly to the topological closed set . (The fixed points of can be identified with the open sets containing , which are bijectively related to the open subsets of .) Thus there is really only one notion of “closed subspace” whether we regard as a space or as a locale (at least as long as is sober).
In constructive mathematics, however, there are many possible inequivalent definitions of a closed subspace, including:
Definition (1) coincides with definition (2) or (3) only if excluded middle holds, since under (2) or (3) every subspace of a discrete space is closed, while under (1) the only closed subspaces are those that are complements, and if every proposition is a negation then the law of double negation follows. On the other hand, Definition (2) is clearly too strong, because even closed intervals in the real numbers can’t be proved constructively to satisfy it (though they do satisfy definitions (1) and (3)). Note also that Definition (1) always implies Definition (3), since if and every open neighborhood of intersects , then and thus . Thus it is not unreasonable (see also below) to define:
This constructive variety of notions of closed subspace gives rise to a corresponding variety of notions of Hausdorff space when applied to the diagonal subspace.
Note also that neither of the sensible constructive definitions behaves quite like closed subspaces do classically. In particular, neither of them is apparently stable under finite unions (though the too-strong Definition (2) is). The situation is better for locales; see below.
Of the “topological” definitions of closed subspace above, it is “strongly closed” (and the too-strong Definition (2)) that seem closest to the localic one. However, in the topological definitions we may not have or even as sets, whereas it remains true constructively that in the lattice of sublocales. In fact, we have the following:
The following are equivalent:
We remarked above that (1)(2), and of course (2)(3). So assume (3). Every spatial sublocale is a union of its points, and in a discrete space points are open; thus if closed sublocales are spatial, they are also open. Since is constructively true, it follows that every open set is complemented in the open-set lattice of any discrete locale, which is to say that all powersets are Boolean algebras, i.e. excluded middle holds.
On the other hand, there is a localic notion of weakly closed sublocale that is closely related to topologically weakly closed subspaces (so that the above notion of “closed sublocale” — the formal complement of an open sublocale — could also be called strongly closed). It is the specialization of the notion of fiberwise closed sublocale? to locale maps into the terminal object.
A sublocale is weakly closed if it is not strongly dense in any larger sublocale of . That is, if whenever is a sublocale of such that by a strongly dense inclusion, then .
Since strong and weak denseness coincide classically, so do strong and weak closedness. And as we expect, strong closedness implies weak closedness, since strong density implies weak density. Moreover, both of them are better-behaved than the corresponding topological notions. For instance, strongly and weakly closed sublocales are both stable under finite unions (in the lattice of sublocales), even constructively.
Both strongly and weakly closed sublocales are “correct” notions; they are simply different. Some classical theorems about closed sublocales are constructively about strongly closed ones, while others (such as the theorem that any subgroup of a localic group is closed) are about weakly closed ones.
However, as we saw above, not every strongly closed sublocale (hence not every weakly closed sublocale either) can be spatial. But it is shown at strongly dense sublocale that a subspace of a space is localically strongly dense if and only if it is topologically strongly dense. This leads us to guess:
A subspace of a (sober) topological space is topologically weakly closed if and only if it is the spatial coreflection of a weakly closed sublocale.
In one direction this is easy: suppose is topologically weakly closed, and let be its localic weak closure. This is, by definition, the largest sublocale of in which is localically strongly dense. Now let be the spatial coreflection of ; since is spatial we have , and since is localically strongly dense in , it is also so in , and hence topologically strongly dense. But is also topologically weakly closed, hence and is the spatial coreflection of the weakly closed sublocale .
The other direction is harder.
Weakly closed sublocales are discussed in
Sketches of an Elephant, C1.1 and C1.2
Peter Johnstone, A constructive ‘closed subgroup theorem’ for localic groups and groupoids, Cahiers de Topologie et Géométrie Différentielle Catégoriques (1989), Volume: 30, Issue: 1, page 3-23 link
M. Jibladze and Peter Johnstone, The frame of fibrewise closed nuclei, Cahiers de Topologie et Géométrie Différentielle Catégoriques (1991), Volume: 32, Issue: 2, page 99-112, link
Peter Johnstone, Fiberwise separation axioms for locales
Last revised on June 30, 2022 at 06:16:30. See the history of this page for a list of all contributions to it.