Iterations of Stone-Čech remainders (Q1676522)

Recall that a map \(\pi: Y\twoheadrightarrow X\) is \textit{perfect and irreducible} (PI for short) if it is continuous, closed, onto, has compact fibers, and the image of any proper closed subset of \(Y\) is not onto. Following [\textit{A. W. Hager}, in: Papers on general topology and related category theory and topological algebra. Proceedings of the 2nd and 3rd conferences on limits, New York, NY, USA, July 2--3, 1985 and June 12--13, 1987. New York, NY: New York Academy of Sciences. 44--59 (1989; Zbl 0881.54025)] we shall say that \((Y,\pi)\) is a \textit{cover} of \(X\) if \(\pi\) is a PI map. The family of covers of a given Tychonoff space \(X\) forms a complete lattice with a minimal element under the natural ordering. \textit{A. M. Gleason} [Ill. J. Math. 2, 482--489 (1958; Zbl 0083.17401)] proved that it always contains a maximal element -- the \textit{Gleason (or projective) cover}, denoted \(\mathbf{E}X\), which can be constructed as the Stone space of the algebra \(\mathbf{RO}(X)\) of regular open subsets of \(X\). This maximal element is extremally disconnected and, in fact, a cover is extremally disconnected if and only if it is homeomorphic to the Gleason cover. Given a topological property \(\mathcal P\) it is natural to ask whether we can find a minimal cover of \(X\) which has the property \(\mathcal P\). This question was investigated in [Hager, loc. cit.]. The reviewed paper follows a similar line of research equipping every space \(X\) with additional structure in the form of a partition \(\mathcal D\) of \(X\) into dense Lindelöf subsets. It is easy to see that a PI map preserves (or ``lifts'') \(\mathcal D\). The paper investigates covers for which this lifted \(\mathcal D\) consists of \(C^*\)-embedded sets. Call such covers \(C^*\)-embedded. Since a dense subset of an extremally disconnected space is always \(C^*\)-embedded the cover \(\mathbf{E}X\) is a \(C^*\)-embedded cover. The main result of the paper is a construction, for some \(X\), of a minimal \(C^*\)-embedded cover \(\Omega(X)\), which is \textit{not} extremally disconnected. Moreover it is shown that compact spaces with partitions into dense sets form a natural category and the \(\Omega\) operation is a co-variant functor in this category. The construction can be described as an inverse limit of a sequence of iterated Čech-Stone remainders in the following sense. Start with a compact space \(X\) and a partition \(\mathcal D\) and choose one \(D_0\in\mathcal D\). The Čech-Stone compactification \(\beta D_0\) forms a natural cover of \(X\) with the map given by the Čech-Stone extension \(\beta i\) of the inclusion map \(i: D_0\to X\). Let \(\beta\mathcal D\) denote the lifted partition. We can again choose a \(D_1\in\beta\mathcal D\) and take \(\beta D_1\). Continuing this way (taking inverse limits at limit steps) one gets an inverse system. This system must eventually stabilize and its inverse limit will be homeomorphic to \(\Omega(X)\) (provided each element of \(\mathcal D\) gets chosen cofinally often). The author also considers the special case \(X=[0,1]\) and \(\mathcal D=\{\mathbb{Q,P}\}\). He shows that the constructed inverse system will always have length \(\omega_1\) and, moreover, the space \(\Omega(X)\) cannot be written as an inverse limit of a (possibly different) system of countable length. This answers a question of \textit{E. K. van Douwen} [Topology Appl. 47, No. 3, 165--171 (1992; Zbl 0766.54024)].