The lexicographic ordered products and the usual Tychonoff products (Q388813)

The author compares the product topology and the lexicographic order topology on products of regular, \(T_1\) LOTS (linearly ordered topological spaces with the usual order topology), where each factor has more than one element. It is shown that for ordinals \(\alpha_n < \gamma_n\), the restrictions of the lexicographic topology and order on \(\prod_{n < \omega} \gamma_n\) to \(\prod_{n < \omega} \alpha_n + 1\) agree with the lexicographic topology and order on the latter space. This is used to show that if for each \(n < \omega\), \(\gamma_n\) is an ordinal with cofinality not equal \(\omega\), then \(\prod_{n < \omega} \gamma_n\) with the lexicographic topology is countably compact. In particular \(\omega_1^2\) and \(\omega_1^\omega\) are countably compact. However, \(\omega_1^{\omega +1}\) with the lexicographic topology is shown to fail to be countably compact. Comparing the lexicographic topology with the usual product topology, the author shows that these topologies differ on \(X^2\) if \(X\) is a non-discrete LOTS, or if \(X\) is a discrete LOTS with a smallest element but no largest element. For an ordinal \(\gamma \geq 2\), if \(\beta_\alpha \geq 2\) for every \(\alpha < \gamma\), then the lexicographic topology on \(X = \prod_{\alpha < \gamma} \beta_\alpha\) is weaker than the product topology on \(X\) if and only if \(\gamma \leq \omega\) and \(\beta_\alpha \leq \omega\) for all \(\alpha < \gamma\). Among other related results, the author shows that \(2^{\omega+1}\) with the lexicograhic topology is not metrizable.