On some properties of essential Darboux rings of real functions defined on topological spaces (Q2501014)

The authors obtain results on the existence and nonexistence of real-valued Darboux functions. Let \(X\) be a topological space and let \(C(X, \mathbb{R})\) denote the set of continuous real-valued functions on \(X\). Call \(f \colon X \ss \mathbb{R}\) a \textit{Darboux function} if \(f(C) \subseteq \mathbb{R}\) is connected for every connected set \(C \subseteq X\). A ring \(\mathcal{R}\) of real-valued Darboux functions is an \textit{essential Darboux ring} if \(\mathcal{R} \setminus C(X, \mathbb{R}) \neq \emptyset\). An essential Darboux ring is a \textit{prime Darboux ring} if for every \(f \in \mathcal{R}\) we have \(f(x)= 0\) whenever \(x\) is a point of discontinuity of \(f\). The authors construct a connected Hausdorff space \(X\) of cardinality continuum such that every real-valued Darboux function on \(X\) is constant; in particular there are no essential Darboux rings of real-valued functions defined on \(X\). On the other hand, if \(X\) is a connected, locally connected and perfectly normal space which is not a singleton, then for every \(x \in X\) one can find a prime Darboux ring \(\mathcal{R}\) such that for every \(f \in \mathcal{R}\), \(f|_{X \setminus \{x\}}\) is continuous. Other results illustrate that in such spaces and in other spaces admitting many continuous functions the structure of essential and prime Darboux rings is as rich as possible. It remains open whether the strong assumptions on \(X\), such as perfect normality or locally connectedness, are necessary for the existence of essential Darboux rings.