Verbal covering properties of topological spaces (Q5963966)

This is an interesting paper that unifies and extends standard star covering properties. For a topological space \(X\) and for each non-negative integer \(n\), the authors introduce nine cardinal invariants related to star covering properties. Let \(A\subset X\) and \(\mathcal U\) be a cover of \(X\). Put \(St^0(A;\mathcal U) = A\) and \(St^n(A;\mathcal U)=\bigcup\{U\in\mathcal U:U\cap St^n(A;\mathcal U) \not=\emptyset\}\). We mention two of nine similar definitions in the paper: \(l^{*n}(X)\) is defined to be the smallest cardinal \(\kappa\) such that for every open cover \(\mathcal U\) of \(X\) there is a subset \(A \subset X\) of cardinality \(|A|\leq\kappa\) such that \(St^n(A; U) =X\), and \(l^{*n\frac{1}{2}}(X)\) is the smallest cardinal \(\kappa\) such that for every open cover \(\mathcal U\) of \(X\) there is a subfamily \(\mathcal V\subset\mathcal U\) of cardinality \(|\mathcal V|\leq\kappa\) such that \(St^n(\cup\mathcal V;\mathcal U)=X\). In this notation a space \(X\) is \(n\)-star Lindelöf if and only if \(l^{*n\frac{1}{2}}(X)\leq\omega\). Proposition 1.2 (8): If \(X\) is a Moore space then \(l^{*1}(x) = d(X)\) where \(d(X)\) is the density of \(X\). The authors say that a (binary) word \(v\) is an element of \(\{+,-\}^{<\omega} = \bigcup_{n\in\omega}\{+,-\}^{n}\), i.e., a word is any function from a natural number into \(\{+,-\}\). An entourage \(U\) on a set \(X\) is any subset of \(X\times X\) that contains the diagonal \(\Delta_X=\{(x,x):x\in X\}\). Well known operations on entourages are the inverse of an entourage \(U^{-1} =\{(x,y):(y,x)\in U\}\) and the composition of two entourages \(U\circ V=U\, V=\{(x,y):\exists z((x,z)\in U\text{ and }(z,y)\in V\}\). A \(U\)-ball is a set of the form \(B(x,U) = \{y\in X:(x,y)\in U)\}\). The authors define \(U^{v}\) for any entourage \(U\) and any word \(v\) by recursion starting with the empty function \(v=\emptyset\): \(U^{\emptyset}= \Delta_X\), and if \(v\) is a word and \(U^{v}\) has been defined then \(U^{v^\frown +} = U^{v+}= U^vU\), and \(U^{v^\frown -} =U^{v-}=U^vU^{-1}\). Lemma 2.2: If \(U\) is an entourage and \(x\in X\) then \(B(x,U^{-1}U) = St(x,\mathcal U)=\bigcup\{B(y,U): x\in B(y,U)\}\), where \(\mathcal U\) is the cover of \(X\) given by \(\mathcal U=\{B(x,U):x\in X\}\). Moreover \(B(x,(U^{-1}U)^n) = St^n(x,\mathcal U)\). A new cardinal invariant is the foredensity \(\ell^-(X)\) of a space \(X\), defined to be the smallest cardinal \(\kappa\) such that for any neighborhood assignment \(\{O_x:x\in X\}\) on \(X\) if there is a subset \(A \subset X\) of cardinality \(|A| \leq \kappa\) which meets every neighborhood \(O_x\), \(x \in X\). The relations among the authors' cardinal invariants, and with older invariants are a major part of the paper. For instance, Theorem 5.1: For any topological space \(X\), \(\ell^-(X) \leq d(X) \leq\ell^-(X) \cdot \chi(X)\) and if \(|X| <\aleph_\omega\), then \(\ell^-(X) = d(X)\), where \(\chi(X)\) is the character of \(X\). Related notions are also considered such as Q-sets, boundedness, and semitopological groups. Reviewer's remark: The authors note that some problems raised in the paper have been answered in a preprint by \textit{I. Juhász}, \textit{L. Soukup} and \textit{Z. Szentmiklóssy} [``Pinning down versus density'', \url{arXiv:1506.00206}].