On the uniform closure of a linear space of bounded real-valued functions (Q794011)

Let X be a topological space and let \(F^*(X)\) be the algebra of all bounded real-valued functions on X. The subset of \(F^*(X)\) consisting of all bounded continuous functions is denoted by \(C^*(X)\). We introduce the notion of S-separation from which we obtain a necessary and sufficient condition for the uniform density of a linear subspace of \(C^*(X)\). Suppose that \(H\subset F^*(X)\) and A and B are subsets of X. We say that H S-separates A and B if for each \(\delta>0\), there is \(f\in H\) such that \(0\leq f(x)\leq 1\) for every \(x\in X\), \(f(A)\subset [0,\delta]\) and \(f(B)\subset [1-\delta,1].\) The following result is proved: Let X be a topological space. A linear subspace E of \(C^*(X)\) is uniformly dense in \(C^*(X)\) if and only if E S-separates every pair of disjoint zero-sets in X. This enables us to give an easy proof of a generalization of the Stone-Weierstrass theorem due to Hewitt. By means of the S-separation we characterize the class of all linear subspaces of \(F^*(X)\) whose uniform closure is a subring or a sublattice of \(F^*(X)\) containing all the real constant functions. From the above characterization we obtain the following: Let X be a completely regular Hausdorff space and let E be a linear subspace of \(C^*(X)\) which separates points and closed sets in X. Then E S-separates \(\{x\in X:\quad f(x)\leq \alpha \}\) and \(\{x\in X:\quad f(x)\geq \beta \},\quad \alpha<\beta,\) for every \(f\in E\) if and only if there is a Hausdorff compactification K of X such that E is uniformly dense in \(\{g|_ X:\) \(g\in C(K)\}\).