Rectangular products with ordinal factors (Q861961)

This paper studies the problem whether the product of two subspaces of an ordinal is a rectangular product in the sense of B. A. Pasynkov. A collection of subsets of a product space \(X\times Y\) is called \textit{rectangular} if it consists of sets of the form \(U\times V\), where \(U\subseteq X\) and \(V\subseteq Y\). A product space \(X\times Y\) is called \textit{rectangular} if every finite cozero cover of \(X\times Y\) has a \(\sigma\)-locally finite rectangular cozero refinement. \textit{B. A. Pasynkov} [Sov. Math., Dokl. 16, 344-347 (1975; Zbl 0334.54024)] proved that for any Tychonoff spaces \(X\) and \(Y\), if \(X\times Y\) is rectangular, then \(\dim(X\times Y)\leq\dim X+\dim Y\). \textit{W. G. Fleissner, N. Kemoto} and \textit{J. Terasawa} [Topology Appl. 132, 109-127 (2003; Zbl 1035.54019)] proved that \(\dim(A\times B)=0\) for any subspaces \(A\) and \(B\) of an ordinal. The question stated at the beginning has arisen after these theorems. In this paper, the authors answer the question by proving the following result: For any subspaces \(A\) and \(B\) of an ordinal, the following conditions (i)--(iii) are equivalent: (i) \(A\times B\) is countably paracompact; (ii) \(A\times B\) is rectangular; and (iii) every binary cozero cover of \(A\times B\) has a discrete rectangular clopen refinement. Since the product of two subspaces of an ordinal is not necessarily countably paracompact, this answers the question negatively. The authors also investigate covering properties of a product such that one of the factor spaces is a subspace of an ordinal. In particular, they prove that if \(X\) is a paracompact space and \(A\) is a paracompact subspace of an ordinal, then \(X\times A\) is paracompact and rectangular.