Complementation in the lattice of Čech closure operators (Q1822073): Difference between revisions

By definition, Čech closure operators satisfy three of the four axioms for topological closure, but they need not be idempotent. (They correspond to the ''mehrstufige topologische Räume of H.-J. Kowalsky, now usually known as pretopological spaces.) For any set X, the set L(X) of all such operators forms a complete lattice. The author describes the atoms and dual-atoms in L(X) explicitly; he finds that they are exactly the same as those in the (complete) lattice T(X) of all topological closure operators, even though its lattice operations differ from those in L(X). This enables the author (i) to show that in L(X), each element is the supremum of all the atoms under it, but not dually (but as the author notes, T(X) is both atomistic and dual-atomistic), (ii) to show that L(X) is complemented iff X is finite (again unlike T(X) - the author refers to \textit{A. K. Steiner}, Bull. Am. Math. Soc. 72, 125-127 (1966; Zbl 0134.182)], who proved that T(X) is always complemented), and (iii) to establish the uniqueness of such complements as do exist in L(X).