Normal Spaces with Prescribed Stone-Cech Remainders (Q3987633)

It is well-known that given a Tychonoff space \(X\) there exists a Tychonoff space \(Y\) whose Stone-Čech remainder \(\beta Y-Y\) is homeomorphic to \(X\). The authors observe that in the usual construction involving the product of \(\beta X\) with an appropriate ordinal space, if \(X\) is not locally compact, then \(Y\) is not normal. Furthermore they note that results by \textit{Fleissner} and \textit{Levy} show that not every Tychonoff space is homeomorphic to the Stone-Čech remainder of some normal space. In this paper, it is shown that for each locally compact \(X\) there does exist a normal space \(Y\) for which \(\beta Y-Y\) is homeomorphic to \(X\). The authors also develop a technique for constructing normal spaces whose Stone-Čech remainder has interesting properties. This method is used to address questions raised by Fleissner and Levy concerning the possible existence of normal spaces \(Y\) for which \(\beta Y-Y\) is countable but not sequential, or sequential but not locally compact. The paper concludes with a result on normal almost compact spaces.