Countable paracompactness of \(\sigma\)-products (Q1779243)

Let \(X=\prod_{i\in\kappa}X_i\) be a product of topological spaces, where \(\kappa\) is an infinite cardinal. The \(\sigma\)-product of the \(X_i\)'s with base point \(s\in X\) is the subspace of \(X\) consisting of the points \(x\in X\) such that the set \(\{i\in\kappa:x(i)\neq s(i)\}\) is at most finite. In this paper, the authors give an example showing that a \(\sigma\)-product of ordinals is not necessarily countably paracompact or \(\kappa\)-normal. This shows that a \(\sigma\)-product of countably paracompact spaces need not be countably paracompact even if every finite subproduct is countably paracompact. The authors also give a new proof without using elementary submodels of their theorem in [Topology Appl. 143, 257--277 (2004; Zbl 1062.54009)] that each \(\sigma\)-product of ordinals with base point \(0\) (= the constant function taking value \(0\)) is countably paracompact, \(\kappa\)-normal and strongly zero-dimensional. Thus, the example also shows that countable paracompactness and \(\kappa\)-normality of a \(\sigma\)-product depends on the choice of the base point. Moreover, they prove that every non-trivial normal \(\sigma\)-product is always countably paracompact.