Lecture 4 : Compact Metric space

Definition 1. A collection F of open sets in a metric space is an open covering of

S
X if X is contained in the union of sets of F i.e. X ⊂ A. A metric space X
A∈F
is called compact metric space if each of its open covers has a finite subcover i.e
N
S
if there exists a finite sub collection {A1 , A2 , . . . , An } ∈ F such that K ⊂ Ai .
i=1

Definition 2. A collection G of closed sets in X is said to have finite intersection

property if every finite sub collection of G has non empty intersection.

Proposition 1. A metric space is compact if and only if every collection G of

closed sets in X with finite intersection property have a non empty intersection.

Proposition 2. A compact metric space has Bolzano-Weierstrass property

Definition 3. A metric space (X, d) is said to be sequentially compact if every

sequence {xn } from X contains a convergent subsequence {xnk }.

Proposition 3. A metric space has Bolzano-Weierstrass property if and only if

it is sequentially compact.

Definition 4. A metric space X is totally bounded if, for each  > 0, there is
a finite set of points {x1 , x2 , . . . , xn } such that whenever x ∈ X, d(x, xi ) <  for
some xi ∈ {x1 , x2 , . . . , xn }. This set of points is called an −net.

Proposition 4. A metric space is totally bounded and complete if and only if it

is sequentially compact.

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Proposition 5. Let X be a sequentially compact metric space and {Gα } be an
infinite open cover of X. Then there exists an  > 0 so that every ball of radius
 is contained in one of the open sets {Gα }.

Proposition 6. A sequentially compact metric space is compact.

Definition 5. Let S ⊂ X be a subset of a metric space (X, d). S is bounded if

there is a point a ∈ S and a number R > 0 such that d(a, x) < R for all x ∈ S.