Pseudocompact refinements of compact ring topologies (Q2415920)

In the paper under review, the authors consider the problem of determining when an infinite compact ring \((R,\mathcal{T})\) admits a pseudocompact ring topology strictly finer than \(\mathcal{T}\). Such ring topologies on \(R\) are called pseudocompact refinements of \(\mathcal{T}\). It is proved that any nonmetrisable compact ring with identity has a pseudocompact refinement. Without assuming identity, the result remains true for nonmetrisable compact rings \((R,\mathcal{T})\) satisfying the following inequality for weights: \(w(R/R_{0}) < w(R),\) where \(R_{0}\) stands for the connected component of zero in \((R,\mathcal{T})\). Also, the authors explain that to solve the mentioned problem for nonmetrisable compact rings it suffices to solve it for nonmetrisable totally disconnected compact rings satisfying \(w\bigl(R/J(R)\bigr) \leq \omega,\) where \(J(R)\) denotes the Jacobson radical of \(R\). The paper concentrates on results concerning the number of pseudocompact refinements. Namely, it is shown that a nonmetrisable compact ring has a pseudocompact refinement of weight \(2^{\vert R \vert}\) in the following cases: \begin{itemize} \item [(i)] \(R\) is a commutative local ring; \item [(ii)] \(R\) is a topologically nilpotent ring; \item [(iii)] \(R\) is a commutative ring such that \(w(R)\) is a regular cardinal. \end{itemize} It is also shown that if \((R,\mathcal{T})\) is a commutative compact ring such that \(w(R,\mathcal{T})\) is an uncountable regular cardinal, then \begin{itemize} \item [(i)] there are exactly \(2^{2^{\vert R \vert}}\)-many pseudocompact refinements of \(\mathcal{T};\) \item [(ii)] there is a pseudocompact refinement of maximal wieght \(2^{\vert R \vert}\) of \(\mathcal{T}\). \end{itemize} The authors show by an example that these two last results do not hold if \(w(R,\mathcal{T})\) is only uncountable, and they ask if the mentioned results hold in case the confinality \(cf\bigl(w(R,\mathcal{T})\bigr) > \omega\).