Nearly realcompact frames. (Q2447127)

This paper extends to frames (or locales), in a conservative way, the concept of a nearly realcompact space due to \textit{R. L. Blair} and \textit{E. K. van Douwen} [Topology Appl. 47, No. 3, 209-221 (1992; Zbl 0772.54021)]. This is a pleasant surprise regarding that the remainders in the classical definition live in the Boolean algebra of subspaces of the space while the subobject lattice in the category of locales is in general no longer complemented (more specifically, it is a coframe so that the role of complements is taken by the co-pseudocomplements, usually called \textit{supplements}, and the corresponding pseudodifference operator). \(P\)-frames and paracompact frames (and hence all Boolean frames) are examples of nearly realcompact frames. The paper provides several frame-theoretic characterisations of nearly realcompact frames, as well as a ring-theoretic characterisation which states that a frame \(L\) is nearly realcompact if and only if the intersection of the free maximal ideals of the ring \(\mathcal RL\) of all continuous real functions on \(L\) coincides with the intersection of its hyper-real maximal ideals.