Spaces of continuous functions on ordinals and ultrafilters

Lattices of continuous, differentiable or analytic functions (46E05) Cardinality properties (cardinal functions and inequalities, discrete subsets) (54A25) Product spaces in general topology (54B10) Function spaces in general topology (54C35)

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The author considers spaces C(X) of continuous real-valued functions, as topological vector spaces endowed with the topology of pointwise convergence, and focuses on the question of when finite Cartesian powers of such spaces are isomorphic (or merely homeomorphic). His main result answers affirmatively Problem 22 of \textit{A. V. Arkhangel'skij} [Usp. Mat. Nauk 33, No.6(204), 29-84 (1978; Zbl 0414.54002)] as to whether there exists a compact Hausdorff space X such that C(X) is not homeomorphic to its square. (The author notes that this problem was independently solved by \textit{W. Marciszewski} [Stud. Math. 88, No.2, 129-137 (1988; Zbl 0666.46022)], using different ideas.) The first result concern \(X=[\omega_ 1]\), the space of ordinals less than or equal to the first uncountable ordinal. It is this space that furnishes the author's answer to Arkhangel'skij's problem. Theorem 1. The finite Cartesian powers of \(C([\omega_ 1])\) are pairwise nonhomeomorphic. - In response to further (but unpublished) questions of Arkhangel'skij, the author next considers spaces of the form \(X=N_{\xi}\), where N is the discrete space of natural numbers, \(\xi\) is a nonprincipal ultrafilter on N, and \(N_{\xi}\) is \(N\cup \{\xi \}\), topologized as a subspace of the Čech-Stone compactification of N. Two ultrafilters on N are equivalent if there is a permutation on N whose Čech-Stone lifting takes one ultrafilter to the other. Theorem 2. \(C(N_{\xi})\) and \(C(N_{\eta})\) are isomorphic as topological vector spaces if and only if \(\xi\) and \(\eta\) are equivalent. - Theorem 3. If \(C(N_{\xi})\) is a topological direct sum of two closed infinite- dimensional vector subspaces, then one of the summands is isomorphic to \(C(N_{\xi})\), and the other is isomorphic to C(N). - By a theorem of \textit{V. V. Tkachuk} [Sov. Math., Dokl. 27, 681-684 (1983); Translation from Dokl. Akad. Nauk SSSR 270, 795-798 (1983; Zbl 0539.54001)], \(C(N_{\xi})\) and C(N) are not isomorphic (or even homeomorphic) when \(\xi\) is nonprincipal. This fact, plus theorem 3, give the following Corollary. For any ultrafilter \(\xi\) on N, all the finite Cartesian powers of \(C(N_{\xi})\) are pairwise nonisomorphic.

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