Tightness and distinguished Fréchet spaces (Q852806)

In the book of \textit{M. Valdivia} [Topics in Locally Convex Spaces, North-Holland Math. Studies 67 (1982; Zbl 0489.46001)], there is the first example of a nondistinguished Fréchet space for which one could prove that its weak bidual is quasi-Suslin, but not K-analytic. The present authors show that already the famous example of a nondistinguished Fréchet space due to Köthe and Grothendieck, a certain echelon space, has the same properties. The authors here work within the very general class \(\mathfrak{G}\) of locally convex spaces introduced by \textit{B. Cascales} and \textit{J. Orihuela} [Math. Z. 195, 365--381 (1987; Zbl 0604.46011)], including all metrizable and all dualmetric (hence all (DF)-) spaces as well as all countable inductive limits of metrizable locally convex spaces. They study \(\mathfrak{G}\)-representations and bornivorous \(\mathfrak{G}\)-representations. Every quasibarrelled space in the class \(\mathfrak{G}\), every dual metric space and every countable inductive limit of metrizable spaces has a bornivorous \(\mathfrak{G}\)-representation. As a corollary to one of their main results, the authors prove that a (DF)-space (or, more generally, a dual metric space) \(X\) is quasibarrelled if and only if it has countable tightness; i.e., for every set \(A\) in \(X\), every \(x\) in the closure of \(A\) must be the limit of a sequence of elements of \(A\). This answers a question of \textit{B. Cascales, J. Kąkol} and \textit{S. A. Saxon} [J. Math. Anal. Appl. 269, 500--518 (2002; Zbl 1012.46007)]. It follows that a Fréchet space \(E\) is distinguished if and only if its strong dual has countable tightness. In this way the authors provide a different proof that the example of Köthe and Grothendieck is nondistinguished. The last section of this interesting article is devoted to the space \(C_c(X)\) of all continuous functions on a completely regular Hausdorff space \(X\), endowed with the compact-open topology. Among other things it is proved that a df-space \(C_c(X)\) has countable tightness if and only if \(X\) is compact.