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I have a question in $\beta\mathbb{R}$, the Stone-Cech compactification of the real line $\mathbb{R}$. My question is: is $\beta\mathbb{R}$ a $\mathrm{F}$-space, i.e., the closure of two disjoint open $F_{\sigma}$-sets are disjoint? I know that $\beta\mathbb{R}\setminus\mathbb{R}$ is a $\mathrm{F}$-space, but not if the whole space has this property.

Thank you for your help in advance :)

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    $\begingroup$ Or perhaps you mean the meaning of F-space as the one used in Alan Dow's paper Some set-theory, Stone–Čech, and F-spaces doi.org/10.1016/j.topol.2011.06.007 and some other related papers cited there? $\endgroup$ Dec 4, 2018 at 9:10
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    $\begingroup$ @MartinSleziak : I edited my definition of an F-space sorry for that. $\endgroup$
    – user132068
    Dec 4, 2018 at 9:11
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    $\begingroup$ Perhaps you could add at least some reference to the fact that the Stone-Čech remainder is an F-space - I'd guess that the paper by Gillman and Henriksen: Rings of continuous functions in which every finitely generated ideal is principal doi.org/10.1090/S0002-9947-1956-0078980-4 seems like a reasonable candidate - and I suppose that after that we can delete all comments related to clarification of the question. $\endgroup$ Dec 4, 2018 at 9:16
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    $\begingroup$ And since I see you have posted from an unregistered account, I will also mention that registering might be useful if you want to prevent the possibility that you lose access to your post in the future. More details on this can be found here: meta.mathoverflow.net/tags/unregistered-users/info $\endgroup$ Dec 4, 2018 at 9:19
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    $\begingroup$ Yes Gillman and Hendriksen is the right reference for this. One can also prove that the closure of every open $F_{\sigma}$-set is open (this property is also known under $\sigma$-Stonean if I am right. This would imply that we have a F-space. $\endgroup$
    – user132068
    Dec 4, 2018 at 10:25

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The answer is no, essentially because $\mathbb{R}$ embeds as a locally compact open subspace of $\beta\mathbb{R}$, and $\mathbb{R}$ is not an F-space.

In detail, for the purposes of this answer I will write $\mathbb{R} \subseteq \beta\mathbb{R}$. The facts we will use are that $\mathbb{R}$ is an open subspace of $\beta\mathbb{R}$ because it is locally compact, and that compact subsets of $\mathbb{R}$ are compact, and therefore closed, in $\beta\mathbb{R}$.

Consider $(0,1)$ and $(1,2)$ in $\mathbb{R}$. These are disjoint opens in $\mathbb{R}$, therefore in $\beta\mathbb{R}$ (because $\mathbb{R}$ is an open subset). The first set $(0,1) = \bigcup\limits_{i=1}^\infty [2^{-i},1-2^{-i}]$, so is $F_\sigma$ in $\beta\mathbb{R}$ (because closed bounded intervals are compact in $\mathbb{R}$, and therefore closed in $\beta\mathbb{R}$). A similar argument shows that $(1,2)$ is $F_\sigma$. Their closures are $[0,1]$ and $[1,2]$ in $\mathbb{R}$, and as these are compact, they are also their closures in $\beta\mathbb{R}$. These are not disjoint.

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