On character of points in the Higson corona of a metric space. (Q2856924)

The authors deal with an ultrafilter version of Higson's corona \(\check X\) of a metric space \(X\), introduced by the reviewer in [Mat. Stud. 20, No. 1, 3--16 (2003; Zbl 1053.54503); Topology Appl. 149, No. 1--3, 149--160 (2005; Zbl 1068.54036)]. By the reviewer's paper [Commentat. Math. Univ. Carol. 52, No. 2, 303--307 (2011; Zbl 1240.54087)], under the Continuum Hypothesis, the corona \(\check X\) of any asymptotically zero-dimensional unbounded separable metric space \(X\) is homeomorphic to the Stone-Čech reminder \(\omega ^{*} = \beta \omega \setminus \omega \) of countable discrete space \(\omega \). The following principal result of the paper shows, in particular, that under \(\mathfrak {u}<\mathfrak {d}\) this statement is not true.NEWLINENEWLINEFor an unbounded metric space \(X\), the minimal character of a point of \(\check X\) is equal to \(\mathfrak {u}\) if \(X\) has asymptotically isolated balls and to \(\max \{\mathfrak {u}, \mathfrak {d}\}\) otherwise.NEWLINENEWLINEFor the small cardinals \(\mathfrak {u}\) and \(\mathfrak {d}\) see [\textit{J. Vaughan}, ``Small uncountable cardinals and topology'', in: J. van Mill (ed.) and G. M. Reed (ed.), Open problems in topology. Amsterdam: North-Holland. 195--218 (1990; Zbl 0718.54001)].