Chain-condition methods in topology (Q1962083)

The author surveys basic countability requirements starting from the weakest one which originated with the famous problem of Souslin (1920) and going towards the strongest ones, the separability and metrizability conditions, and he has tried to expose the rather wide range of places where the method is relevant as well as some unifying features of the method. In Section 1 it is insisted that the problem of productness of the countable chain condition is quite important for the development of the subject surveying related results. In Section 2 the author considers another great motivating source of this subject, the problem of the existence of strictly positive measures. It was the area that initiated the study of a whole new array of chain conditions which all, in some sense, resemble the dual form of the separability condition. A compact space \(X\) carries a strictly positive measure if there is a bounded Radon measure \(\mu\) on \(X\) such that \(\mu(U)>0\) for all nonempty open \(U\subset X\), where a Radon measure \(\mu\) on \(X\) is a measure defined on a \(\sigma\)-field of subsets of \(X\) which includes the family of all open subsets of \(X\) and which is inner regular with respect to the family of compact sets, i.e. \(\mu(E)= \sup\{\mu(K): K\subset E\), \(K\) compact\} for any measurable set \(E\). In Section 3 the author shows that compact spaces with good local properties tend to identify some of the chain conditions considered so far and, in view of this point, he proved the following two facts: I. (Theorem 3.4) \(MA_{\omega_1}\), is equivalent to the statement that every compact first countable ccc space is separable. II. (Theorem 3.5) \(MA_{\omega_1}\) is equivalent to the statement that every ccc metrizably fibered compactum is separable, where a metrizable fibered compactum means the compact space which maps continuously with metrizable fibers onto a metric compact space. The purpose of Section 4 is to analyze the corresponding form of Souslin's hypothesis stating that every compact \(T_5\) (= hereditarily normal) ccc space is separable and the following facts are shown: I. (Theorem 4.1) If \(MA_{\omega_1}\) holds, then every compact \(T_5\) ccc space has a countable \(\pi\)-basis. II. (Theorem 4.3 \((MA_{\omega_1}))\) There is a measure algebra which forces that every \(T_5\) compact ccc space is hereditarily separable. Relating Katětov's problem (i.e. if \(X^2\) is \(T_5\) compact, is \(X\) metrizable?) in Section 5, it is attempted to understanding the class of perfectly normal compacta and their close relationship to the class of metric compacta, and the following is proved as one of facts which show the class of spaces having the Bockstein separation property (i.e. every two disjoint open sets are contained in disjoint open \(F_\sigma\) sets) behaves the same way as the class of perfect compacta. Theorem 5.1. Let \(X\) be a compact space which has the Bockstein separation property hereditarily. Then every subspace of \(X\) satisfies the countable chain condition. In Section 6 the author discusses the class of compacta which do not map onto the Tikhonov cube \([0,1]^{\omega_1}\). In Section 7 the author lists some examples which show that compactness is also an essential assumption as well as some size-restriction like ``first countability'' which was needed in Section 3. In Section 8 the same study as in Sections 3-6 is presented but from a different angle involving some basic cardinal characteristics of the continuum. In Section 9 the author presents some applications of the chain condition method in studying compact subsets for function spaces.