Between compactness and completeness

In this paper the author proves many new characterizations of cofinally complete metric spaces. The notion of cofinal completeness appears implicitly in the setting of uniform spaces and filters in the paper by \textit{H. H. Corson} [Am. J. Math. 80, 185--190 (1958; Zbl 0080.15803)]. In the case of metric spaces, the concept may be stated conveniently in terms of sequences, for instance see the book by \textit{N. R. Howes} [Modern Analysis and Topology. New York: Springer-Verlag (1995; Zbl 0853.54002)]. A metric space \((X,d)\) is called cofinally complete provided every cofinally Cauchy sequence in \(X\) has a cluster point. A sequence \((x_n)=\{x_n:n\in\mathbb N\}\subset X\) is said to be cofinally Cauchy provided for every \(\epsilon>0\) there exists an infinite (i.e., cofinal) set \(E_n\subset\mathbb N\) such that for all \(i,j\in E_n\), \(d(x_i,x_j)<\epsilon\). We state two of the author's characterizations. One characterization involves functions between metric spaces. A function \(f:(X,d)\rightarrow (Y,\rho)\) is said to be uniformly locally bounded if and only if there exists \(\epsilon>0\) such that for all \(x\in X\), \(f(S(x,\epsilon))\) is a bounded subset of \(Y\), where \(S(x,\epsilon)=\{y\in X:d(x,y)<\epsilon\}\). Theorem: \((X,d)\) is cofinally complete if and only if for every metric space \( (Y,\rho)\), every continuous function \(f:(X,d)\rightarrow (Y,\rho)\) is uniformly locally bounded. Several characterizations involve the new functional \(\upsilon:X\rightarrow[0,\infty]\) defined by \(\upsilon(x)=\sup\{\epsilon>0:S(x,\epsilon)\text{ is compact}\}\), if \(x\) has a compact neighborhood, and \(v(x)=0\) otherwise. Let nlc(X) =\(\{x\in X:\upsilon(x)=0\}\), the set of points in \(X\) that do not have a compact neighborhood. Theorem: \((X,d)\) is cofinally complete if and only if whenever \((x_n)\) is a sequence in \(X\) with \(\lim_{n\rightarrow \infty}\upsilon(x_n)=0\) then the sequence has a cluster point. Hence in a cofinally complete metric space, nlc(X) is compact. Using this characterization, the author presents a new proof of a theorem by \textit{S. Romaguera} [Quest. Answers Gen. Topology 16, No. 2, 165--170 (1998; Zbl 0941.54030)] that says a metric space \((X,d)\) has an admissible, cofinally complete metric \(\rho\) if and only if \(\mathrm{nlc}(X)\) is compact.

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