Stone duality and Gleason covers through de Vries duality (Q960844)

A de Vries algebra is a pair \((B,\prec)\), where \(B\) is a complete Boolean algebra and \(\prec\) is a binary relation on \(B\) satisfying certain axioms that imitate the defining axioms of a proximity on a set. The motivating example of a de Vries algebra originates in a proximity space \((X,\prec)\): the complete Boolean algebra of regular open sets of \(X\) in the topology induced by \(\prec\), equipped with the relation \(\prec\), is a de Vries algebra. Given two de Vries algebras \((A,\prec)\) and \((B,\prec)\), a mapping \(f:A\rightarrow B\) is a de Vries morphism if (1) \(f(0)=0\), (2) \(f(a\wedge b)=f(a)\wedge f(b)\), (3) \(a\prec b\Rightarrow \neg f(\neg a)\prec f(b)\), and (4) \(f(a)=\bigvee\{f(b)\mid b\prec a\}\). De Vries algebras and de Vries morphisms form a category (a word of caution: the composition of de Vries morphisms is not the usual composition of functions since this composition fails to satisfy condition (4) above). De Vries duality establishes a dual equivalence between the category of de Vries algebras and de Vries morphisms and the category of compact Hausdorff spaces and continuous maps. In the present paper the author shows how Stone duality can be obtained from de Vries duality as a particular case. For that he introduces zero-dimensional de Vries algebras and shows that the category of zero-dimensional de Vries algebras is dually equivalent to the category of Stone spaces. He also introduces the concept of an extremally disconnected de Vries algebra and shows that the category of extremally disconnected de Vries algebras is equivalent to the category of complete Boolean algebras and is dually equivalent to the category of extremally disconnected compact Hausdorff spaces. As a consequence, a simple construction of the Gleason cover of a compact Hausdorff space is presented by means of de Vries duality. Finally, the insight that Stone duality provides a better understanding of de Vries duality is discussed.