Approach theory in merotopic, Cauchy and convergence spaces. I (Q1307404)

The authors introduce the concept of approach-merotopic structure by means of a map measuring the smallness of members contained in a collection of sets and satisfying four axioms. The category AMER consisting of approach-merotopic spaces and contractions is a topological construct (Theorem 3.8) and the category MER of merotopic spaces is a bireflective and bicoreflective subcategory of AMER (Theorems 4.2, 4.3). By adding the filter-generated axiom the authors introduce the notion of approach-filter merotopic structure. The corresponding category AFIL is bicoreflectively embedded in AMER (Theorem 5.2) and contains the categories FIL of filter-merotopic spaces and ps-MET\(^\infty\) of extended pseudo-semimetric spaces as embedded subcategories (Theorems 6.2, 6.3 and the functor \(M\) from section 7).