Exact filters and joins of closed sublocales (Q2198610)

\textit{Exact meets} in a distributive lattice are the meets \(\bigwedge a_i\) such that \((\bigwedge a_i) \vee b = \bigwedge (a_i\vee b)\) for any \(b\). This notion is due to [\textit{H. M. MacNeille}, Bull. Am. Math. Soc. 41, 193 (1935; JFM 61.0062.17)], who called them `distributive meets'. They are viewed as a generalization of finite meets and lead to the notion of an \textit{exact filter}, namely a filter closed under all the exact meets (rather than just the finite ones). The system of all exact filters in a frame \(L\) is a frame. The system \(\mathsf{S}_{\mathfrak c}(L)\) of joins of closed sublocales of a locale \(L\) has been the subject of recent interest [\textit{J. Picado} et al., Houston J. Math. 45, No. 1, 21--38 (2019; Zbl 1459.06008)]. It is a frame naturally embedded in the co-frame \(\mathsf{S}(L)\) of sublocales of \(L\), and it is a Boolean algebra for a broad class of locales, thus providing something like a generalized discrete cover of \(L\) (see [\textit{J. Picado} and \textit{A. Pultr}, Quaest. Math. 40, No. 8, 1111--1125 (2017; Zbl 1436.06026)]). This interesting paper links these two seemingly quite distinct notions, by proving that for any locale \(L\) there is a natural one-to-one correspondence between exact filters on \(L\) and the members of \(\mathsf{S}_{\mathfrak c}(L)\). The analogous question about the sublocales that are meets of opens (the so-called \textit{fitted sublocales}, that form the sub-co-frame \(\mathsf{S}_{\mathfrak o}(L)\) of \(\mathsf{S}(L)\)) is addressed at the end of the paper. The fitted sublocales also correspond to a special kind of filters (referred to as the \textit{fitted filters}) but they are not quite so nicely characterized. Unlike \(\mathsf{S}_{\mathfrak c}(L)\), \(\mathsf{S}_{\mathfrak o}(L)\) coincides with \(\mathsf{S}(L)\) in a very large class of locales, the fitted ones, containing, e.g., all the regular locales. Thus it follows that for any regular locale \(L\), its co-frame of sublocales is equivalent to the co-frame of all fitted filters on \(L\). More recently, in [\textit{M. A. Moshier} et al., ``Exact and strongly exact filters'', Appl. Categ. Struct. 28, 907--920 (2020)], fitted filters are characterized as the \textit{strongly exact filters}, that is, the filters closed under all \textit{strongly exact meets} (i.e. those meets that are preserved by all frame homomorphisms).