A dichotomy for the convex spaces of probability measures (Q719527)

In this paper \(K\) denotes a compact Hausdorff space and \(P(K)\) the set of Radon probability measures on \(K\). For a topological space \(X\) and \(x \in X\), \(\chi(x, X)\) denotes the minimal cadinality of a local base at \(x\). For a cardinal \(\kappa\) and a \(\mu \in P(K)\), \(\mu\) is said to be of Maharam type \(\kappa\), written as \(mt(\mu)=\kappa\), if the density character of \(L_{1}(\mu)\) is \(\kappa\); and \(\mu\) is said to be strongly \(\kappa\)-determined if there exists a continuous map \(f: K \to [0, 1]^{\kappa}\) such that for any compact \(F \subset K\), we have \(\mu(F)= \mu(f^{-1} (f(F))\). \(sd(\mu)= \kappa\) means that \(\kappa\) is the least cardinal for which \(\mu\) is strongly \(\kappa\)-determined, and if \(\kappa= \omega\), \(\mu\) is said to be strongly countably determined. In this paper the authors prove some properties of the cardinals \(\chi(x, X)\), \(bmt(\mu)\) and \(sd(\mu)\) and get some improvements of known results. The main result is: If \(\kappa\) is a cardinal of uncountable cofinality and \(M\) is a non-empty convex compact subset of \(P(K)\), then either there exists a \(\mu \in M\) such that \(\chi(\mu, M) < \kappa\), or there is a \(\mu \in M\) such that \(mt(\mu) \geq \kappa\). The authors also prove that \(\chi(\mu, P(K)) = sd(\mu)\). Some applications to the Banach spaces \(C(K)\) of continuous functions for some special spaces \(K\) are also discussed.