Locales as spectral spaces (Q364688)

Stone's representation theorem for distributive lattices yields a dual equivalence between the category \(\mathsf{DLat}\) of (bounded) distributive lattices and that of spectral spaces, \(\mathsf{Spec}\). Several results characterizing subcategories of \(\mathsf{DLat}\) in terms of properties of their corresponding spectral spaces have appeared in the literature. In this paper, the author presents a similar characterization for the category \(\mathsf{Frm}\) of frames. In this case, the corresponding spectral spaces, named \textit{constructibly extremally disconnected}, are precisely the ones where the closure (in the patch topology) of an open set is open. The subcategory of constructibly extremally disconnected spectral spaces will be then equivalent to the opposite category of \(\mathsf{Frm}\), that is, the category \(\mathsf{Loc}\) of locales and localic maps. This provides a representation for \(\mathsf{Loc}\) inside \(\mathsf{Spec}\) and leads the author to approach locales via the systematic study of them as spectral spaces. Among other things, the relationship between the category of constructibly extremally disconnected spectral spaces and the categories \(\mathsf{Top}\) (of topological spaces) and \(\mathsf{Spec}\) is studied. The notions of localic subspaces and localic points of a locale (regarded as a spectral space \(X\)) are introduced and studied. Of course, the localic subspaces of \(X\) will form a co-frame, which is anti-isomorphic to the assembly of the frame of open and quasi-compact subsets of \(X\).