The pointwise limit of separately continuous functions

A function \(f : \mathbb R \times \mathbb R \rightarrow \mathbb R\) is called separately continuous if for every \(x,y \in \mathbb R\) the functions \(f_{x}(\cdot) = f(x, \cdot)\), \(f_{y}(\cdot) = f(\cdot,y)\) are continuous. The author shows that if \(f : \mathbb R \times \mathbb R \rightarrow \mathbb R\) is the pointwise limit of separately continuous functions, then the set of points of discontinuity of \(f\) is of first category in \(\mathbb R \times \mathbb R\). In particular, the characteristic function of a dense countable subset of \(\mathbb R \times \mathbb R\) is not the pointwise limit of separately continuous functions. The author constructs a function which is the pointwise limit of separately continuous functions but which is not of Baire class one. Nevertheless, the set of pointwise limits of separately continuous functions is shown to be a porous subset of the set of Baire class two functions endowed with the uniform convergence topology. The characterization, in terms of sublevel sets, of the class of pointwise limits of separately continuous functions remains open. In particular, the author does not obtain a characterization of those subsets of \(\mathbb R \times \mathbb R\) whose characteristic function is the pointwise limit of separately continuous functions.

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