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Cardinalities of countably based topologies
Saharon Shelah
Aug 1991
Department of Mathematics, The Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel
1
Department of Mathematics, Rutgers University, New Brunswick NJ, USA
ABSTRACT
Let T be the family of open subsets of a topological space (not necessarily
Hausdor or even T
0
). We prove that if T has a countable base and is not
countable, then T has cardinality at least continuum.
* * *
Topological spaces are not assumed to be Hausdor, or even T
0
.
Theorem 1 Let T be the set of open subsets of a topological space, and
suppose that T has a countable base B (more precisely, B is a countable
subset of T which is closed under nite intersections, and the sets in T are
the unions of subsets of B). Then the cardinality of T is either 2

0
or
0
.
This answers a question of Kishor Kale. We thank Wilfrid Hodges for telling
us the question and for writing up the proof from notes. In a subsequent
1
Partially supported by the Basic Research Fund, Israeli Academy of Sciences. Publi-
cation no. 454 done 6,8/1991.
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work we shall deal with the case [B[ < 2

, [T[ > [B[, strong limit of

Our proof begins with some notation. A set is given, together with a
countable family B of subsets of ; =

B and B is closed under nite
intersections. We write T for the set of all unions of subsets of B. Thus T is
a topology on and B is a base for this topology.
We write X, Y etc. for subsets of . We write T(X) for the set X Y :
Y T, and likewise B(X) with B in place of T. We say X is small if
[T(X)[ , and large otherwise.
Lemma 2 If [[ =
0
and [T[ >
0
then [T[ = 2

0
.
PROOF: Identify with the ordinal , and list the set B by a function
with domain , so that B = (m) : m < . Then a set X is in T if and
only if
(Y )(n ) (n X m(m Y n (m))).
Thus B is an analytic set, and so its cardinality must be either 2

0
or
0
(cf. Manseld & Weitkamp [1] Theorem 6.3). 2
2
Lemma 3 Suppose is linearly ordered by some ordering _ in such a way
that the sets in T are initial segments of and any initial segment of the
form (, x) is open. If [T[ >
0
then [T[ = 2

0
.
PROOF: As B is countable, the linear order has a countable dense subset
D, but as T is countable, the rationals are not embeddable in D, i.e. D is
scattered. By Hausdors structure theorem for scattered linear orderings,
D has at most countably many initial segments (cf. Manseld & Weitkamp
[1] Theorem 9.21). 2
3
Henceforth we assume that is uncountable and large, and that [T[ <
2

0
, and we aim for a contradiction. Replacing by a suitable subset if
necessary, we can also assume:
Hypothesis The cardinality of is
1
.
Finally we can assume without loss that if x, y are any two distinct elements
of then there is a set in B which contains one but not the other. (Dene x
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and y to be equivalent if they lie in exactly the same sets in B. Choose one
representative of each equivalence class.)
Lemma 4 If for each n < , X
n
is a small subset of , then

n<
X
n
is
small.
PROOF: Each X
n
has a countable subset Y
n
such that if V, W are el-
ements of T with V X
n
,= W X
n
then there is some element y Y
n
which is in exactly one of V, W. Now if V, W are elements of T which dier
on

n<
X
n
, then they already dier on some X
n
and hence they dier on
Y =

n<
Y
n
. But Y is countable; so Lemma 2 implies that either Y is small
or [T(Y )[ = 2

0
. The latter is impossible since [T[ < 2

0
, and so Y is small,
hence

n<
X
n
is small. 2
4
Our main argument lies in the next lemma, which needs some further
notation. Let Z be a subset of . The Z-closure of a subset X of Z is the set
cl
Z
(X) of all elements y of Z such that every set in B which contains y meets
X. Given an element x of Z and a subset X of Z, we write back
Z
(x, X) for
the set y Z : y , X cl
Z
x.
Lemma 5 Suppose Z is a large subset of . Then there are an element x
of Z and a set X B such that x X and back
Z
(x, X) is large.
PROOF: Assume Z is a counterexample; we shall reach a contradiction.
By a Z-rich set we mean a subset N of Z TZ such that
N is countable.
If x N and X B then back
Z
(x, X) N.
If U is a subset of Z which is a member of N and is small, and V, W
are elements of T such that V U ,= WU, then there is some element
of N U which lies in exactly one of V and W.
Since Z has cardinality at most
1
, we can construct a strictly increasing
continuous chain N
i
: i <
1
) of Z-rich sets, such that Z

i<
1
N
i
.
Let us say that an element x of Z is pertinent if there is some i <
1
such
that x N
i+1
N
i
, and x lies in some small subset of Z which is in N
i
. If z
is not pertinent, we say it is impertinent.
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We claim that if V, W are any two distinct members of T(Z) then some
impertinent element is in exactly one of V and W. For this, consider the least
i <
1
such that some element z of N
i+1
N
i
is in the symmetric dierence of
V and W. If z is pertinent, then by the last clause in the denition of Z-rich
sets, some element of N
i
already distinguishes V and W, contradicting the
choice of i. This proves the claim.
Now let I be the set of all impertinent elements of Z. Since Z is large
and N
0
Z is small, the claim implies that I is large. Thinning the chain if
necessary, we can arrange that for each i <
1
, N
i+1
N
i
contains innitely
many elements of I.
We can partition I into countably many sets, so that for every i <
1
,
each set meets I (N
i+1
N
i
) in exactly one element. By Lemma 4 above,
since I is large, at least one of these partition sets must be large. Let J be
a large partition set. We dene a binary relation _ on J by:
x _ y for all U B, if y U then x U.
We shall reach a contradiction with Lemma 3 by showing that _ is a linear
ordering and T(J) is a set of initial segments of J under _ which contains
all the initial segments of the form x : x y.
The relation _ is clearly reexive and transitive. We made it antisym-
metric by assuming that no two distinct elements of lie in exactly the same
sets in B. We must show that if x and y are distinct elements of Z then either
x _ y or y _ x.
Let x, y be a counterexample, so that there are sets X, Y B with
x X Y and y Y X. By symmetry and the choice of J we can assume
that for some i <
1
, x N
i
and y N
i+1
N
i
. Since y is impertinent,
no small set containing y is in N
i
. In particular back
Z
(x, X) contains y
and hence is not both small and in N
i
. But since N
i
is Z-rich, it contains
back
Z
(x, X). Also we assumed that Z is a counterexample to the lemma;
this implies that back
Z
(x, X) is small. We have a contradiction.
Thus it follows that _ is a linear ordering of J, and the denition of _
then implies that T(J) is a set of initial segments of _. As B separates
points, every set x : x y is open. This contradicts Lemma 3 and so
proves the present lemma. 2
5
PROOF OF THEOREM 1: Now we can nish the proof of the theorem.
We shall nd elements x
n
of and sets X
n
T (n < ) such that x
m
X
n
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if and only if m = n. By taking arbitrary unions of the sets X
n
it clearly
follows that [T[ = 2

.
We dene x
n
and X
n
by induction on n. Writing Z
1
for and Z
n
for
back
Z
n1
(x
n
, X
n
), we require that x
n+1
Z
n
and each set Z
n
is large. Since
is large, Lemma 5 tells us that we can begin by choosing x
0
and X
0
so
that back

(x
0
, X
0
) is large.
After x
n
and X
n
have been chosen, we use Lemma 5 again to choose
x
n+1
in Z
n
and Y
n+1
in B so that x
n+1
Y
n+1
and back
Zn
(x
n+1
, Y
n+1
) is
large. For each m n, x
n+1
is in Z
m
and hence it is not in cl
Z
m1
x
m
,
so that there is some set U
m
B which contains x
n+1
but not x
m
. Put
X
n+1
=

mn
U
m
Y
n+1
. (Note that this is the one place where we use the
fact that B, and hence also T, is closed under nite intersections.) Since
X
n+1
Y
n+1
, back
Zn
(x
n+1
, X
n+1
) is large.
We must show that this works. First, x
n
X
n
for each n by construction.
Next, if m n then x
n+1
is in Z
m
and hence it is not in X
m
. Finally if m n
then x
m
, X
n+1
by the denition of X
n+1
. 2
5
The following theorem has a similar proof. We omit details, except to
say that (i) countable is replaced by of cardinality at most [B[, and
1
by [B[
+
, and (ii) a more complicated analogue of Lemma 2 is needed.
Theorem 6 Let T be the set of open subsets of a topological space (not
neccessarily Hausdor, nor even T
0
), and suppose that T has a base B which
is closed under nite intersections, and [T[ > [B[ +
0
.Then
(1) there are x
n
and X
n
B for n < such that for all m, n < ,
x
n
X
m
i m = n, and
(2) [T[ 2

0
.
One naturally asks whether we can let B in Theorem 1 be any set such
that T is the set of unions of sets in B, without the requirement that B is
closed under nite intersections. The answer is no, for the following reason.
Lemma 7 Suppose there is a tree S with levels, nodes and at least
branches of length , where ; suppose also that S is normal (i.e. at each
limit level there are never two or more nodes with the same predecessors).
Then there are a set of cardinality and a family of subsets of which
has exactly unions.
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CONSTRUCTION: Let be a set of branches of length ; for each
s S let U
s
be x : s , x. Lastly let B be the family of sets
U
s
: s S, so that [B[ = . Now the sets in T are: members of B, itself
and complements of singletons; so [T[ = . 2
7
Thus by starting with the full binary tree of height , we can build
examples where B is countable and T is any cardinal between and 2

.
References
[1] Richard Manseld and Galen Weitkamp, Recursive aspects of descriptive
set theory, Oxford Univ. Press 1985.
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