Lindelöf \(\Sigma\)-spaces: an omnipresent class (Q549569)

This paper is a very comprehensive survey devoted to the study of Lindelöf \(\Sigma\)-spaces. As the author points out in the introduction, ``the purpose of this survey is not only to describe the most interesting progress in the study of Lindelöf \(\Sigma\)-spaces and their applications in \(C_p\) theory, but also to draw attention to some old problems which seemed to be forgotten until their new relationships were discovered with the nowadays research''. One outstanding feature of this work is that it contains most proofs of the basic facts of the theory. Furthermore, most results are accompanied by historical references and comments about open questions for future research. An extensive bibliography is provided at the end of the paper. The survey is divided as follows: Section 1 presents the notation and terminology used throughout the paper. Section 2 should be very useful to anyone interested in this topic, it presents the class of Lindelöf \(\Sigma\)-spaces as the minimal ``nice'' class that contains compact spaces and second countable spaces. Basic facts are considered, including several examples and proofs of most results (up to ten definitions of this notion are given and their equivalence is proved). In Section 3, the author studies which properties of compact and second countable spaces also hold for Lindelöf \(\Sigma\)-spaces. For example, it is proved that if \(G\) is a topological group which is also a Lindelöf \(\Sigma\)-space, then \(G\) has the Souslin property (this generalizes a well known result by M. Tkachenko). Section 4 is devoted to studying Lindelöf \(\Sigma\)-spaces in functions spaces, one of the main source of questions and applications of this topic. Among other results, it is shown how this notion extends the classical definition of Gul'ko compact spaces. A comprehensive collection of the recent results, related to Lindelöf \(\Sigma\)-spaces, developed by many different authors is presented. It is worth remarking that the survey contains a good number of open questions that the author often presents with comments that relate them to different basic notions of general topology. In summary, it is an excellent survey that is recommended to all workers interested in the study of Lindelöf \(\Sigma\)-spaces.