scientific article; zbMATH DE number 1180210

Publication date 20 December 1998

Cardinality properties (cardinal functions and inequalities, discrete subsets) (54A25)

A subset \(A\) of a space \(X\) is an H-set if every open cover of \(X\) has a finite subcollection whose union contains \(A\) in its closure. An H-set in a regular space is simply compact however the concept of an H-set is useful in the study of Hausdorff non-regular spaces. A similar non-regular version of Lindelöf exists: a space is almost Lindelöf if each open cover has a countable subcollection \({\mathcal C}\) such that the union of the closures of members of \({\mathcal C}\) is a cover. Note that in the countable case, this is much stronger than weakly Lindelöf where the subcollection should have dense union. Two natural questions arise, motivated by Arkhangel'skij's result that first countable Lindelöf spaces have cardinality at most the continuum. If \(\chi\) denotes the character of the space \(X\) (every point has a local base of cardinality at most \(\chi\)), then is every H-set of \(X\) of cardinality at most \(2^\chi\), and, if \(X\) is almost Lindelöf, is the cardinality of \(X\) at most \(2^\chi\)? It has been shown that if \(X\) is itself an H-set (i.e. \(X\) is H-closed) then the inequality does hold. The paper contains partial positive results on these questions. It turns out that only partial positive results can be expected by an announcement of Bella and Yashchenko. The author's approach is to treat subsets of cardinality less than \(\chi\) as negligible. A space is called \(\chi\)-Hausdorff if for each pair \(x\neq y\) of points in \(X\), there are closed neighborhoods of the point that meet in a set of cardinality less than \(\chi\). A common generalization of H-set and almost Lindelöf is introduced: a set is a \(\chi\)-set if each open cover has a subcollection of cardinality less \(\chi\) such the union of the closures cover the set. The main result is that a \(\chi\)-set in a \(\chi\)-Hausdorff space has cardinality at most \(2^\chi\). The above mentioned questions for H-sets and almost Lindelöf spaces thus have a positive answer for \(\chi\)-Hausdorff spaces.

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