Completions of partial metric spaces (Q2254715)

A partial metric space which was defined by \textit{S. G. Matthews} in his article [``Partial metric topology'', in: Papers on general topology and applications. Papers from the 8th summer conference at Queens College, New York, NY, USA, June 18--20, 1992. New York, NY: The New York Academy of Sciences. 183--197 (1994; Zbl 0911.54025)] is a pair \((X, p)\) where \(X\) is a nonempty set and \(p:X\times X \to \mathbb R\) such that for any \(x,y,z\in X\) 1. \(0\leq p(x,x)\leq p(x,y)\), 2. if \(p(x,x)=p(x,y)=p(y,y)\), then \(x=y\), 3. \(p(x,y)=p(y,x)\), 4. \(p(x,z)\leq p(x,y)+p(y,z)-p(y,y)\). For an \(x\) in \((X,p)\), the ``ball-neighborhood'' \(B(x,\varepsilon)\) is defined as \(B(x,\varepsilon)=\{y\in X:p(x,y)<p(x,x)+\varepsilon\}\); the collection of all ball-neighborhoods as a base may generate a topology \(\tau\) on \(X\). The most important difference between a ``partial metric'' \(p\) and a usual metric is that for some \(x\)'s in the partial metric space \((X,p)\), the self-distances \(p(x,x)\) may not be zero which leads to the fact that \(y\in B(x,\varepsilon)\) and \(x\in B(y,\varepsilon)\) may not be equivalent in general. In the article [\textit{M. Bukatin} et al., Am. Math. Mon. 116, No. 8, 708--718 (2009; Zbl 1229.54037)] the concepts of Cauchy sequences, convergence of a sequence and completeness for partial metric spaces have been defined and investigated. A partial metric space \((X,p)\) is said to be complete if any Cauchy sequence in \((X,p)\) is convergent. In the article under review, the authors introduce the concept of symmetrically dense subsets of partial metric spaces. A subset \(Y\) of the partial metric space \((X,p)\) is said to be symmetrically dense if for any \(x\in X\) and any \(\varepsilon>0\) there exists a \(y\in Y\) such that \(y\in B(x,\varepsilon)\) and \(x\in B(y,\varepsilon)\). Then the authors prove that for any partial metric space \((X,p)\), there exists a complete partial metric space \((Y, p^*)\) such that \((X,p)\) is symmetrically densely embedded in \((Y,p^*)\) with respect to isometry; and on the other hand, this complete partial metric space \((Y,p^*)\) is unique.