The smallest basically disconnected preimage of a space (Q5902999)

Given a completely regular Hausdorff space X, the author, via an inverse limit of spaces of prime z-filters, constructs a basically disconnected space \(\Lambda\) X and a perfect irreducible map \(\Lambda\) : \(\Lambda\) \(X\to X\) such that, if Y is basically disconnected and \(f: Y\to X\) is a perfect irreducible map, then there exists a perfect irreducible map \(\Lambda\) \(f: Y\to \Lambda X\) such that \(f=\Lambda \circ \Lambda f\). The space \(\Lambda\) X is necessarily unique and may be thought of as the smallest basically disconnected perfect irreducible preimage of X. For X compact, \(\Lambda\) X is shown to be homeomorphic to the Stone space of the \(\sigma\)-completion of the Boolean algebra generated by the collection \(\{\) cl int \(Z: Z\in Z(X)\}\) of regular closed subsets of X. For X locally compact and basically disconnected, a smallest basically disconnected compactification of X is constructed. The author concludes by considering topological properties \({\mathcal P}\) for which, given X, one can expect to find a smallest preimage among all the perfect irreducible preimages of X with property \({\mathcal P}\). A number of interesting unsolved problems are posed.