1 Lecture 8: September 22 Correction. During the discussion section on Friday, we discovered that the defi- nition of local path connectedness that I gave in class is wrong. Here is the correct definition: Definition 8.1. A topological space X is locally path connected if for every point x X and every open set U containing x, there is a path connected open set V with∈ x V and V U. ∈ ⊆ In other words, in order to be locally path connected, every point needs to have arbitrarily small path connected neighborhoods. (In the definition I gave two weeks ago, I just required that every point should have some path connected neighbor- hood.) Note that a path connected space may not be locally path connected: an example is to take the topologist’s sine curve 2 (0,y) 1 y 1 (x, sin 1/x) 0 <x 1 R − ≤ ≤ ∪ ≤ ⊆ and to join the two points (0, 1) and (1,sin 1) by a path that is disjoint from the rest of the set. The resulting space is path connected, but not locally path connected at any point of the form (0,y)with 1 y 1. − ≤ ≤ Baire’s theorem. Here is a cute problem. Suppose that f :(0, ) R is a contin- uous function with the property that the sequence of numbers f(∞x),f→(2x),f(3x),... converges to zero for every x (0, ). Show that ∈ ∞ lim f(x)=0. x →∞ This problem, and several others of a similar nature, is basically unsolvable unless you know the following result. Theorem 8.2 (Baire’s theorem). Let X be a compact Hausdorffspace. (a) If X = A A can be written as a countable union of closed sets A , 1 ∪ 2 ∪··· n then at least one set An has nonempty interior. (b) If U1,U2,... X is a countable collection of dense open sets, then the intersection U⊆ U is dense in X. 1 ∩ 2 ∩··· Here a subset Y X in a topological space is called dense if its closure Y is equal to X, or equivalently,⊆ if Y intersects every nonempty open subset of X.In analysis, there is another version of Baire’s theorem for complete metric spaces: the assumption is that X is a complete metric space, and the conclusion is the same as in Theorem 8.2. In the first half of today’s class, we are going to prove Theorem 8.2. The second portion of the theorem is actually stronger than the first one, so let me begin by explaining why (b) implies (a). Let X be a compact Hausdorffspace, and suppose that we have countably many closed subsets A1,A2,... with ∞ X = An. n=1 If the interior int A = , then the open complement U = X A must be dense n ∅ n \ n in X: the reason is that X U X U = A is an open subset of A ,hence \ n ⊆ \ n n n 2 empty, which means that Un = X. Now if (a) was false, we would have a countable collection of dense open sets; since we are assuming that (b) holds, the intersection ∞ Un n=1 is dense in X, and therefore nonempty. But since ∞ ∞ ∞ X U = X U = A = X, \ n \ n n n=1 n=1 n=1 this contradicts our initial assumption that X is the union of the An. This argument also shows in which sense (b) is stronger than (a): it tells us not only that the intersection of countably many dense open sets is nonempty, but that it is still dense in X. The proof of Baire’s theorem requires a little bit of preparation; along the way, we have to prove two other results that will also be useful for other things later on. As a first step, we restate the definition of compactness in terms of closed sets. To do that, we simply replace “open” by “closed” and “union” by “intersection”; we also make the following definition. Definition 8.3. A collection A of subsets of X has the finite intersection property if A A = for every A ,...,A A . 1 ∩···∩ n ∅ 1 n ∈ The definition of compactness in terms of open coverings is great for deducing global results from local ones: if something is true in a neighborhood of every point in a compact space, then the fact that finitely many of those neighborhoods cover X will often imply that it is true on all of X. The following formulation emphasizes a different aspect of compactness: the ability to find points with certain properties. Proposition 8.4. A topological space X is compact if and only if, for every col- lection A of closed subsets with the finite intersection property, the intersection A A A ∈ is nonempty. If we think of each closed set A A as being a certain condition on the points of X, and of the finite intersection∈ property as saying that the conditions are con- sistent with each other, then the result can be interpreted as follows: provided X is compact, there is at least one point x X that satisfies all the conditions at once. ∈ Proof. Let us first show that the condition is necessary. Suppose that X is com- pact, and that A is a collection of closed sets with the finite intersection property. Consider the collection of open sets U = X A A A . \ ∈ The finite intersection property of means exactly that no finite number of sets A in U can cover X: this is clear because (X A ) (X A )=X (A A ) = X \ 1 ∪···∪ \ n \ 1 ∩···∩ n 3 for every A1,...,An A . Because X is compact, it follows that U cannot be an open covering of X;butthen∈ X A = X A = X, \ \ A A A A ∈ ∈ which means that the intersection of all the sets in A is nonempty. To see that the condition is also sufficient, we can use the same argument backwards. The next step in the proof of Baire’s theorem is the following observation about compact Hausdorffspaces. Proposition 8.5. Let X be a compact Hausdorffspace and let x X be a point. Inside every neighborhood U of x, there is a smaller neighborhood∈ V of x with V U. ⊆ Proof. This follows easily from our ability to separate points and closed sets in a compact Hausdorffspace (see the note after the proof of Proposition 7.3). The closed set X U does not contain the point x; consequently, we can find disjoint open subsets \V,W X with x V and X U W . Now X W is closed, and so ⊆ ∈ \ ⊆ \ V X W U, ⊆ \ ⊆ as asserted. The property in the proposition is called local compactness;wewillstudyitina little more detail during the second half of today’s class. But first, let us complete the proof of Baire’s theorem. Proof of Theorem 8.2. Let U1,U2,... be countably many dense open subsets of X. To show that their intersection is again dense in X, we have to prove that ∞ U U = ∩ n ∅ n=1 for every nonempty open set U X. It is not hard to show by induction that all finite intersections U U ⊆U are nonempty: U U = because U is dense; ∩ 1 ∩···∩ n ∩ 1 ∅ 1 U U1 U2 = because U2 is dense, etc. The problem is to find points that belong to∩ all of∩ these ∅ sets at once, and it is here that Proposition 8.4 comes into play. First, consider the intersection U U . It must be nonempty (because U is dense ∩ 1 1 in X), and so we can find a nonempty open set V1 with V1 U U1 (by applying Proposition 8.5 to any point in the intersection). Next, consider⊆ ∩ the intersection V U . It must be nonempty (because U is dense), and so we can find a nonempty 1 ∩ 2 2 open set V2 with V2 V1 U2 (by applying Proposition 8.5 to any point in the intersection). Observe⊆ that∩ we have V V and V V U U U U . 2 ⊆ 1 2 ⊆ 1 ∩ 2 ⊆ ∩ 1 ∩ 2 Continuing in this way, we obtain a sequence of nonempty open sets V1,V2,... with the property that Vn Vn 1 Un; by construction, their closures satisfy ⊆ − ∩ V V V 1 ⊇ 2 ⊇ 3 ⊇··· and so the collection of closed sets Vn has the finite intersection property. Since X is compact, Proposition 8.4 implies that ∞ V = . n ∅ n=1 4 But since V U U U for every n, we also have n ⊆ ∩ 1 ∩···∩ n ∞ ∞ V U U , n ⊆ ∩ n n=1 n=1 and so the intersection on the right-hand side is indeed nonempty. If you like a challenge, try to solve the following problem: Let f : R R be an infinitely differentiable function, meaning that the n-th derivative f (n)→exists and is continous for every n N. Suppose that for every x R, there is some n N with f (n)(x) = 0. Prove∈ that f must be a polynomial! (Warning:∈ This problem∈ is very difficult even if you know Baire’s theorem.) Local compactness and one-point compactification. In Proposition 8.5,we proved that every compact Hausdorffspace has the following property. Definition 8.6. A topological space X is called locally compact if for every x X and every open set U containing x, there is an open set V containing x whose∈ closure V is compact and contained in U. Of course, there are many examples of topological spaces that are locally compact but not compact. Example 8.7. Rn is locally compact; in fact, we showed earlier that every closed and bounded subset of Rn is compact.