Topological algebraic structure on Souslin and Aronszajn lines (Q409526)

Z. Feng and R. W. Heath showed that any separable linearly ordered space (LOTS) which is a cancellative topological semigroup must be metrizable. The authors now establish that the same statement holds more generally for CCC LOTS by proving that no Souslin line admits a continuous cancellative binary operation. It is also shown that no Lindelöf Aronszajn line admits such an operation. The main open problem of the authors asks whether there is a nonmetrizable first countable LOTS which is a cancellative topological semigroup.