Monotone covering properties defined by closure-preserving operators (Q2215684)

A space \(X\) is said to have a \textit{monotone (respectively, monotone open) closure-preserving operator} \(r\) if whenever \(\mathcal U\) is an open cover of \(X\), then \(r(\mathcal U)\) is a closure-preserving cover of arbitrary (respectively, open) sets that refines \(\mathcal U\) and such that if \(\mathcal U\) and \(\mathcal V\) are open covers of \(X\) such that \(\mathcal U\) refines \(\mathcal V\), then \(r(\mathcal U)\) refines \(r(\mathcal V)\). After a short introduction, Section 2 of this paper deals with monotone operators in \(GO\)-spaces. For a \(GO\)-space \(X\), \(E_r\) denotes the set \(\{x\in X:\) neither \([x,\rightarrow)\) nor \((\leftarrow, x]\) is open\(\}\), and then one of the main results of this section, Theorem 2.7, states that if \(X\) is a \(GO\)-space with a monotone closure-preserving operator, and if \(E_r\) is closed and discrete, then \(X\) has a monotone open closure-preserving operator. Another result of this section, Theorem 2.10, includes among many other statements, that if \((X,\tau,<)\) is a \(GO\)-space such that the order topology of \((X,<)\) has a strongly \(\sigma\)-discrete dense subspace, then \(X\) has a monotone closure-preserving operator if and only if it has a monotone open closure-preserving operator. Section 3 deals with the metrization of \(LOTS\) and \(GO\)-spaces. Among the principal results of this section, it is shown that if \(X\) is a compact \(LOTS\) with a monotone closure-preserving operator, then \(X\) is first countable and if \(X\) has a monotone open closure-preserving operator then \(X\) is metrizable. An interesting unsolved problem is whether or not the word ``open'' can be omitted in the last result.