Continuous maps on Aronszajn trees (Q438820)

This paper is concerned with continuous order-preserving maps from special Aronszajn trees to subsets of \(\mathbb R\) with no perfect subsets (i.e., totally imperfect sets). The topology on the tree \((T, \sqsubseteq)\) is the following: define \(\mathrm{ht}(x)\) to be the order type of \(\{z \in T: z \sqsubset x\}\). \(U\) is open iff \(\forall y \in U\) with \(\mathrm{ht}(y)\) a limit \(\exists x \sqsubset y\) with \(\{z \in T: x \sqsubset z \sqsubset y\} \subset U\). The main theorem is that, assuming \(\diamondsuit\), if \(B\) is a totally imperfect subset of \(\mathbb R\), then there is a special Aronszajn tree \(T\) so that if \(f: T \rightarrow B\) and \(f\) is order-preserving, then \(f\) fails to be continuous. On the other hand, it is shown in ZFC that for any special Aronszajn tree \(T\) there is a totally imperfect \(B \subset \mathbb R\) and a continuous order-preserving map \(\psi: T \rightarrow B\) so that if \(\psi(x) = \psi(y)\) then \(x, y\) have the same set of predecessors.