On the Čech number of \(C_p(X)\) (Q1426521)

All spaces are assumed Tikhonov. Given two spaces \(X\) and \(Y\), \(C_p(X,Y)\) denotes the space of all functions from \(X\) to \(Y\) equipped with the topology of pointwise convergence; i.e. the subspace of the set of all functions from \(X\) to \(Y\) with the Tikhonov topology. When \(Y\) is the real line \(\mathbb{R}\), \(C_p(X,\mathbb{R})\) is denoted by \(C_p(X)\). I denotes the unit interval \([0,1]\) with the usual topology. The Čech number \(\check C(X)\) of a space \(X\) means the pseudocharacter of \(X\) in \(\beta X\); i.e. \(\check C(X)= \min\{|{\mathcal U}|\): \({\mathcal U}\) is a family of open sets in \(\beta X\) and \(X= \bigcap{\mathcal U}\}\). The authors discuss the Čech number of spaces \(C_p(X)\) and \(C_p(X,I)\) and obtain results as below. Proposition 1.10. If \(\{X_\alpha: \alpha\in A\}\) is a family of spaces and \(\Pi\{X_\alpha:\alpha\in A\}\) is not locally compact, then \[ \check C(\Pi\{X_\alpha: \alpha\in A\})=| A|\cdot \sup\{\check C(X_\alpha):\alpha\in A\}. \] Theorem 2.3. For every infinite space \(X\), \(\check C(C_p(X))= | X|\cdot\check C(C_p(X,I))\). For the proof of the above theorem, the following proposition plays an important role, which also characterizes the basic space. Proposition 2.2. If \(\check C(C_p(X,I))\leq\tau\), then there are disjoint clopen subspaces \(X_0\) and \(X_1\) of \(X\) such that \(X= X_0\cup X_1\), \(| X_0|\leq\tau\), and \(X_1\) is discrete. The \(k\)-covering number of a space \(Z\) is defined as \[ k\text{cov}(Z)= \{|{\mathcal K}|:{\mathcal K}\text{ is a compact cover of }Z\}. \] The authors discuss relations between the Čech number and the \(k\)-covering number and obtain the following results. Proposition 4.1. Let \(X\) be a space such that \(C_p(X,I)\) is a \(F_{\tau\lambda}\)-set in \(I^X\). Then \(\check C(\check C_p(X,I))\leq k\text{cov}((| X|\cdot\tau)^\lambda)\), where \(\tau\) and \(\lambda\) are infinite cardinals with discrete topologies, if necessary. Theorem 4.2. Let \(X\) be a subspace of \(C_p(Y)\). Then \[ \check C(C_p(X,I))\leq k\operatorname{cov}((| X|\cdot k\operatorname {cov}(Y))^{k\operatorname {cov}(X')+\omega}), \] where \(X'\) denotes the set of all nonisolated points of \(X\). They also obtain several results by adding conditions to spaces or in cases of cardinal numbers which are restricted by special ones.