On topological structure of topological semilattices with open principal ideals (Q1605606)

The author continues investigations of compact topological semilattices with open principal ideals started by \textit{O. Gutik} [Semigroup Forum 60, No. 2, 243-252 (2000; Zbl 0945.22002)]. All topological spaces considered in this paper are Hausdorff. A topological semilattice means a topological space \(S\) endowed with a continuous associative commutative idempotent operation \(\wedge: S\times S\to S\). A subset \({\mathcal I}\subset X\) is called an ideal in \(X\) if \(x\wedge y\in{\mathcal I}\) for every \(x\in{\mathcal I}\) and \(y\in X\). An ideal \({\mathcal I}\subset X\) is called a principal ideal if \({\mathcal I}=\downarrow a=\{x\in X: x\wedge a=x\}\) for some \(a\in X\). If every principal ideal is open in \(X\), then \(X\) is said to be a topological semilattice with open principal ideals. The semilattice operation of \(X\) induces a partial order on \(X: x\leq y\) if \(x\wedge y=x\). Topological semilattices with open principal ideals are tightly connected with the so-called well-founded semilattices, i.e., semilattices whose partial order is well-founded. For a linearly ordered compact topological semilattice \(S\) the following conditions are equivalent: (1) \(S\) is a topological semilattice with open principal ideals; (2) \(S\) is a well-founded semilattice; (3) \(S\) is topologically isomorphic to a non-limit ordinal \(\alpha\) endowed with the interval topology and the semilattice min-operation. The implication \((1)\Rightarrow(2)\) still holds for any compact topological semilattice, while the converse implication fails in general. In this paper it is shown that an isomorphic copy of a sufficiently large non-limit ordinal \(\alpha\) can be found in any compact topological semilattices with open principal ideals. The following theorem is proved. Theorem 1. Every infinite compact topological semilattice \(S\) with open principal ideals contains a subsemilattice topologically isomorphic to a non-limit ordinal \(\alpha\) with \(|\alpha|=|S|\). Since \(|i(\alpha)|=|\alpha|\) for every uncountable ordinal \(\alpha\) we have the following corollary: If \(S\) is an uncountable compact topological semilattice with open principal ideals, then \(S\) is a compact scattered space with \(|i(S)|=|S|\). Thus no uncountable compact scattered space \(X\) with \(|i(X)|=|X|\) supports a structure of a topological semilattice with open principal ideals. The next theorems generalize the corollary. Theorem 2. If \(K\) is a compact subset of a topological semilattice with open principal ideals, then \(K\) is a scattered compactum. Moreover, \(|i(K)|=|K|\) if \(K\) is uncountable and the semilattice \(S\) satisfies one of the conditions: (1) \(S\) is compact; (2) \(S\) is a scattered space; (3) \(S\) is a well-founded semilattice. Theorem 3. Every uncountable compact subset of a scattered topological lattice has infinite index of scatteredness. These theorems suggest the conjecture: If \(K\) is an uncountable compact subset of a scattered topological lattice, then \(|i(K)|=|K|\).