INTERPOLATION OF -COMPACTNESS AND PCF

ISTV

AN JUH

ASZ AND ZOLT

AN SZENTMIKL

OSSY
Abstract. We call a topological space -compact if every subset
of size has a complete accumulation point in it. Let (, , )
denote the following statement: < < = cf() and there is
S

: < []

such that [ : [S

A[ = [ < whenever
A []
<
. We show that if (, , ) holds and the space X
is both -compact and -compact then X is -compact as well.
Moreover, from PCF theory we deduce (cf(), ,
+
) for every
singular cardinal . As a corollary we get that a linearly Lindelof
and

-compact space is uncountably compact, that is -compact

for all uncountable cardinals .
We start by recalling that a point x in a topological space X is
said to be a complete accumulation point of a set A X i for every
neighbourhood U of x we have [U A[ = [A[. We denote the set of all
complete accumulation points of A by A

.
It is well-known that a space is compact i every innite subset has
a complete accumulation point. This justies to call a space -compact
if every subset of cardinality in it has a complete accumulation point.
Now, let be a singular cardinal and =

: < cf() with

< for each < cf(). Clearly, if a space X is both

-compact
for all < cf() and cf()-compact then X is -compact as well.
This trivial extrapolation property of -compactness (for singular
) implies that in the above characterization of compactness one may
restrict to subsets of regular cardinality.
The aim of this note is to present a new interpolation result on
-compactness, i.e. one in which < < and we deduce -
compactness of a space from its - and -compactness. Again, this
works for singular cardinals and the proof uses non-trivial results
from Shelahs PCF theory.
2000 Mathematics Subject Classication. 03E04, 54A25, 54D30.
Key words and phrases. complete accumulation point, -compact space, linearly
Lindelof space, PCF theory.
Research on this paper was supported by OTKA grants no. 61600 and 68262.
1
2 I. JUH

ASZ AND Z. SZENTMIKL

OSSY
Denition 1. Let , , be cardinals, then (, , ) denotes the fol-
lowing statement: < < = cf() and there is S

: < []

such that [ : [S

A[ = [ < whenever A []
<
.
As we can see from our next theorem, this property yields the
promised interpolation result for -compactness.
Theorem 2. Assume that (, , ) holds and the space X is both
-compact and -compact. Then X is -compact as well.
Proof. Let Y be any subset of X with [Y [ = and, using (, , ),
x a family S

: < [Y ]

such that [ : [S

A[ = [ <
whenever A [Y ]
<
. Since X is -compact we may then pick a
complete accumulation point p

for each < .

Now we distinguish two cases. If [p

: < [ < then the

regularity of implies that there is p X with [ < : p

= p[ = .
If, on the other hand, [p

: < [ = then we can use the -

compactness of X to pick a complete accumulation point p of this
set. In both cases the point p X has the property that for every
neighbourhood U of p we have [ : [S

U[ = [ = .
Since S

U Y U, this implies using (, , ) that [Y U[ = ,

hence p is a complete accumulation point of Y , hence X is indeed
-compact.
Our following result implies that if (, , ) holds then must be
singular.
Theorem 3. If (, , ) holds then we have cf() = cf().
Proof. Assume that S

: < []

witnesses (, , ) and x
a strictly increasing sequence of ordinals

< for < cf() that is

conal in . By the regularity of > there is an ordinal < such
that [S

[ < holds for each < cf(). But this S

must be conal
in , hence from [S

[ = we get cf() cf() .

Now assume that we had cf() < cf() and set [S

[ =

for each
< cf(). Our assumptions then imply

= sup

: < cf() <

as well as cf() < , contradicting that S

= S

: < cf()
and [S

[ = . This completes our proof.

According to theorem 3 the smallest cardinal for which (, , )
may hold for a given singular cardinal is cf(). Our main result says
that this actually does happen with the natural choice =
+
.
Theorem 4. For every singular cardinal we have (cf(), ,
+
).
Proof. We shall make use of the following fundamental result of Shelah
from his PCF theory: There is a strictly increasing sequence of length
INTERPOLATION OF -COMPACTNESS 3
cf() of regular cardinals

< conal in and such that in the

product
P =

: < cf()
there is a scale f

: <
+
of length
+
. (This is Main Claim 1.3 on
p. 46 of [2].)
Spelling it out, this means that the
+
-sequence f

: <
+
P
is increasing and conal with respect to the partial ordering <

of
eventual dominance on P. Here for f, g P we have f <

g i there is
< cf() such that f() < g() whenever < cf().
Now, to show that this implies (cf(), ,
+
), we take the set H =

: < cf() as our underlying set. Note that then [H[ =

and every function f P, construed as a set of ordered pairs (or in
other words: identied with its graph) is a subset of H of cardinality
cf().
We claim that the scale sequence f

: <
+
[H]
cf()
witnesses
(cf(), ,
+
). Indeed, let A be any subset of H with [A[ < . We
may then choose < cf() in such a way that [A[ <

. Clearly, then
there is a function g P such that we have A(

) g()
whenever < cf(). Since f

: <
+
is conal in P w.r.t. <

,
there is a <
+
with g <

and obviously we have [A f

[ < cf()
whenever <
+
.
Note that the above proof actually establishes the following more
general result: If for some increasing sequence of regular cardinals

:
< cf() that is conal in there is a scale of length = cf() in
the product

: < cf() then (cf(), , ) holds.

Before giving some further interesting application of the property
(, , ), we present a result that enables us to lift the rst param-
eter cf() in theorem 4 to higher cardinals.
Theorem 5. If (cf(), , ) holds for some singular cardinal then
we also have (, , ) whenever cf() < < with cf() = cf().
Proof. Let us put cf() = and x a strictly increasing and conal
sequence

: < of cardinals below . We also x a partition of

into disjoint sets H

: < with [H

[ =

for each < .

Let us now choose a family S

: < []

that witnesses
(cf(), , ). Since is regular, we may assume without any loss of
generality that [H

[ < holds for every < and < . Note

that this implies [ : H

,= [ = for each < .

Now take a cardinal with cf() = < < and x a strictly
increasing and conal sequence

: < of cardinals below .

4 I. JUH

ASZ AND Z. SZENTMIKL

OSSY
To show that (, , ) is valid, we may use as our underlying set
S = H

: < , since clearly [S[ = .

For each < let us now dene the set T

S as follows:
T

= (S

: < .
Then we have [T

[ = because [ : H

,= [ = . We claim that
T

: < witnesses (, , ).
Indeed, let A S with [A[ < . For each < let B

denote the
set of all rst co-ordinates of the pairs that occur in A(H

) and
set B = B

: < . Clearly, we have B and [B[ [A[ < ,

hence [ : [S

B[ = [ <
Now, consider any ordinal < with [S

B[ < . If , )
(T

A) (H

) for some < then we have S

,
consequently H

B ,= . This implies that

W = : (T

A) (H

) ,=
has cardinality [S

B[ < . But for each W we have

[T

(H

)[

< ,
hence
T

A = (T

A) (H

) : W
implies [T

A[ < as well. But this shows that T

: < indeed
witnesses (, , ).
Arhangelskii has recently introduced and studied in [1] the class of
spaces that are -compact for all uncountable cardinals and, quite ap-
propriately, called them uncountably compact. In particular, he showed
that these spaces are Lindelof.
We recall that the spaces that are -compact for all uncountable
regular cardinals have been around for a long time and are called
linearly Lindelof. Moreover, the question under what conditions is a
linearly Lindelof space Lindelof is important and well-studied. Note,
however, that a linearly Lindelof space is obviously comapct i it is
countably compact, i.e. -compact. This should be compared with
our next result that, we think, is far from being obvious.
Theorem 6. Every linearly Lindelof and

-compact space is uncount-

ably compact hence, in particular, Lindelof.
Proof. Let X be a linearly Lindelof and

-compact space. Accord-

ing to the (trivial) extrapolation property of -compactness that we
mentioned in the introduction, X is -compact for all cardinals of
uncountable conality. Consequently, it only remains to show that X
INTERPOLATION OF -COMPACTNESS 5
is -compact whenever is a singular cardinal of countable conality
with

< .
But, according to theorems 4 and 5, we have (

, ,
+
) and X is
both

-compact and
+
-compact, hence theorem 2 implies that X is
-compact as well.
Arhangelskii gave in [1] the following surprising result which shows
that the class of uncountably compact T
3
-spaces is rather restricted:
Every uncountably compact T
3
-space X has a (possibly empty) com-
pact subset C such that for every open set U C we have [XU[ <

.
Below we show that in this result the T
3
separation axiom can be re-
placed by T
1
plus van Douwens property wD, see e.g. 3.12 in [3].
Since uncountably compact T
3
-spaces are normal, being also Lindelof,
and the wD property is a very weak form of normality, this indeed is
an improvement.
Denition 7. A topological space X is said to be -concentrated on
its subset Y if for every open set U Y we have [X U[ < .
So what we claim can be formulated as follows.
Theorem 8. Every uncountably compact T
1
space X with the wD prop-
erty is

-concentrated on some (possibly empty) compact subset C.

Proof. Let C be the set of those points x X for which every neigh-
bourhood has cardinality at least

. First we show that C, as a

subspace, is compact. Indeed, C is clearly closed in X, hence Lindelof,
so it suces to show for this that C is countably compact.
Assume, on the contrary, that C is not countably compact. Then,
as X is T
1
, there is an innite closed discrete A [C]

. But then by
the wD property there is an innite B A that expands to a discrete
(in X) collection of open sets U
x
: x B. By the denition of C we
have [U
x
[

for each x B.
Let B = x
n
: n < be any one-to-one enumeration of B. Then
for each n < we may pick a subset A
n
U
x
n
with [A
n
[ =
n
and
set A = A
n
: n < . But then [A[ =

and A has no complete

accumulation point, a contradiction.
Next we show that X is

concentrated on C. Indeed, let U C

be open. If we had [XU[

then any complete accumulation point

X U is not in U but is in C, again a contradiction.
The following easy result, that we add or the sake of completeness,
yields a partial converse to theorem 8.
Theorem 9. If a space X is -concentrated on a compact subset C
then X is -compact for all cardinals .
6 I. JUH

ASZ AND Z. SZENTMIKL

OSSY
Proof. Let A X be any subset with [A[ = . We claim that
we even have A

C ,= . Assume, on the contrary, that every point

x C has an open neighbourhood U
x
with [A U
x
[ < . Then the
compactness of C implies C U = U
x
: x F for some nite
subset F of C. But then we have [A U[ < , hence [A U[ = ,
contradicting that X is -concentrated on C.
Putting all these theorems together we immediately obtain the fol-
lowing result.
Corollary 10. Let X be a T
1
space with property wD that is
n
-
compact for each 0 < n < . Then X is uncountably compact if and
only if it is

-concentrated on some compact subset.

References
[1] A. V. Arhangelskii, Homogeneity and Complete Accumulation Points, Topol-
ogy Proceedings 32 (2008), pp. 239243
[2] S. Shelah, Cardinal Arithmetic, Oxford Logic Guides, vol. 29, Oxford University
Press, 1994
[3] E. van Douwen, The Integers and Topology, In: Handbook of Set-Theoretic
Topology, K. Kunen and J. E. Vaughan editors, Elsevier, 1984, pp. 111167
Alfr ed R enyi Institute of Mathematics, P.O. Box 127, 1364 Bu-
dapest, Hungary
E-mail address: juhasz@renyi.hu
E otv os Lor ant University, Department of Analysis,, 1117 Budapest,
P azm any P eter s et any 1/A, Hungary
E-mail address: zoli@renyi.hu