Non-trivial non weakly pseudocompact spaces (Q1663847)

In the paper under review and below all topological spaces are assumed to be Tychonoff. A topological space $X$ is said to be \textit{weakly pseudocompact} [\textit{S. García-Ferreira} and \textit{A. García-Máynez}, Houston J. Math. 20, No 1, 145--159 (1994; Zbl 0809.54012)] if $X$ is $G_ \delta $-dense in some compactification $Y$ of $X$, namely, every nonempty $G _ \delta $-set of $Y$ contains at least one point of $X$. The interest of the notion stems from the facts that weak pseudocompactness is a productive property and that every pseudocompact space is weakly pseudocompact. Indeed, it is well-known [\textit{E. Hewitt}, Trans. Am. Math. Soc. 64, 45--99 (1948; Zbl 0032.28603)] that a space $X$ is pseudocompact if and only if $X$ is $G_ \delta $-dense in its Čech-Stone compactification $\beta(X)$. In spite of the very simple definition, it has been noticed in [\textit{O. Okunev} and \textit{A. Tamariz-Mascarúa}, Comment. Math. Univ. Carol. 41, No. 1, 155--173 (2000; Zbl 1037.54503)] that proving weak pseudocompactness or its absence turns out to be ``surprisingly difficult for some very simple spaces'', for example, $\mathbb R ^{ \omega _1} $. Indeed, the authors of the paper under review state that they do not know whether uncountable powers of either $ \omega$, or $\mathbb{R}$ or of the Sorgenfrey line are weakly pseudocompact. García-Ferreira and García-Máynez [loc. cit.] proved that every weakly pseudocompact Lindelöf space is compact, and every weakly pseudocompact space is Baire. Accordingly, \textit{F. W. Eckertson} [Topology Appl. 72, No. 2, 149--157 (1996; Zbl 0857.54022)] called a space \textit{trivially not weakly pseudocompact} if it is either Lindelöf noncompact or not Baire. Eckertson noted ``the scarcity of nontrivial examples of not weakly pseudocompact spaces''. The authors of the paper under review provide many concrete such nontrivial examples. After some technical results about nowhere dense subsets of the Čech-Stone compactification of ccc product spaces, they prove powerful general results about products of uncountable families of Lindelöf $\Sigma$-spaces, under additional assumptions. These general results are then exemplified in specific instances. To describe one among many such instances, suppose that $X$ is a \textit{Bernstein} subset of $\mathbb{R}$, namely, $X$ intersects both $P$ and $\mathbb{R}\setminus P$, for every perfect subset $P$ of $\mathbb{R}$. If $T$ is an uncountable set and $Y$ is any $G_ \delta $-dense subspace of $X^T$, then $Y$ is a Baire space which is neither Lindelöf nor weakly pseudocompact. The paper is clear and well-written. It makes progress and provides a good introduction to the simply stated but surprisingly difficult problem of identifying spaces which are (or are not) weakly pseudocompact.