Selective screenability in topological groups (Q958495)

A topological space has the selective screenability property if every sequence of open covers can be refined by a sequence of pairwise disjoint collections of open sets whose union is a cover of \(X\). This property was defined by \textit{D. F. Addis} and \textit{J. H. Gresham} [Fundam. Math. 101, 195--205 (1978; Zbl 0397.54051)], under a different name, as a topological space version of the ``property C'' originally defined by \textit{W. E. Haver} [Topology Conf., Virginia Polytechnic Inst. and State Univ. 1973, Lect. Notes Math. 375, 108--113 (1974; Zbl 0287.54028)] for metric spaces: a metric space has the Haver property if such a refinement exists for any sequence of open covers each of which consists of open balls with the same radius. The author introduces the property \(S_c({\mathcal O}_{nbd},{\mathcal O})\) as yet another version of these covering properties, this time adapted to topological groups, where open balls with the same radius are replaced by translates of the same neighborhood of the identity element. It is shown (Theorem 2) that a metrizable group has property \(S_c({\mathcal O}_{nbd},{\mathcal O})\) if and only if all its equivalent left invariant metrics satisfy the Haver property. Theorem 5 states that in any topological group with the Hurewicz covering property, \(S_c({\mathcal O}_{nbd},{\mathcal O})\) implies the selective screenability property. The paper contains also some results stating conditions under which \(S_c({\mathcal O}_{nbd},{\mathcal O})\) is preserved by products, and characterizations of both finite and countable dimensionality among metrizable groups by means of a game naturally associated with the property \(S_c({\mathcal O}_{nbd},{\mathcal O})\).