4
$\begingroup$

A space $X$ is said to be Menger if for each sequence $(\mathcal{U}_n)$ of open covers of $X$, there is a sequence $(\mathcal{V}_n)$ such that $\mathcal{V}_n$ is a finite subcollection of $\mathcal{U}_n$, $n\in\omega$, and $\{\bigcup\mathcal{V}_n:n\in\omega\}$ is an open cover of $X$. A space $X$ is Lindelöf if each open cover has a countable subcover.

My question was motivated from the fact that classical examples of Lindelöf spaces that are not Menger, have dense Menger subspaces.

$\endgroup$
2
  • $\begingroup$ What are the classical examples? $\endgroup$
    – LSpice
    Commented Sep 30, 2022 at 16:32
  • $\begingroup$ The irrationals are the classical example of a Lindelöf space which is not Menger. You can find the proof here: dantopology.wordpress.com/2020/02/18/… $\endgroup$ Commented Sep 30, 2022 at 18:18

1 Answer 1

5
$\begingroup$

Every space $X$ with a dense Menger subspace must be weakly Menger, that is, for each sequence $\{\mathcal{U}_n: n<\omega \}$ of open covers there is a finite sub-collection $\mathcal{V}_n \subset \mathcal{U}_n$ such that $\bigcup \{\mathcal{V}_n: n <\omega \}$ is dense in $X$. Therefore it's enough to find a Lindelöf non-weakly Menger space.

Given a topological space $(Y, \tau)$ let us denote by $\mathcal{K}[Y]$ the space of all compact nowhere dense subsets of $Y$ endowed with the Pixley–Roy topology, that is, the topology generated by the family $\{[F,U]: F \in \mathcal{K}[Y], U \in \tau, F \subset U\}$ where $[F,U]=\{G \in \mathcal{K}[Y]: F \subset G \subset U\}$.

Let $\mathbb{P}$ be the space of irrationals and consider the space $Z=\mathcal{K}[\mathbb{P}]$. van Douwen, Tall and Weiss proved that $Z$ is a ccc non-separable first-countable zero-dimensional Baire space without isolated points (see Theorem 3 of van Douwen, Eric K.; Tall, Franklin D.; Weiss, William A. R., Non-metrizable hereditarily Lindelöf from CH, Proc. Am. Math. Soc. (to appear) ZBL0345.54016.) and therefore, by the Corollary from page 140 of the same paper, under CH, $Z$ contains a dense Luzin subspace $X$. Luzin means that every nowhere dense subset of $X$ is countable and it is easy to see that this feature, along with the ccc of $X$ implies that $X$ is hereditarily Lindelof. It remains to prove that $X$ is not weakly Menger, but since $X$ is dense in $Z$ it suffices to prove that $Z$ is not weakly Menger.

Indeed, since $\mathbb{P}$ is not Menger, there is a countable sequence $\{\mathcal{U}_n: n < \omega \}$ of open covers of $\mathbb{P}$ which witnesses that. For every $K \in Z$ let $\mathcal{U}^K_n$ be a finite subcollection of $\mathcal{U}_n$ which covers $K$. Then $\mathcal{O}_n=\{[K, \bigcup \mathcal{U}^K_n]: K \in Z \}$ is an open cover of $Z$ for every $n<\omega$. Let $\mathcal{G}_n$ be a finite subcollection of $\mathcal{O}_n$ and let $\mathcal{F}_n$ be the finite subset of $Z$ such that $K \in \mathcal{F}_n$ if and only if $[K, \bigcup \mathcal{U}^K_n] \in \mathcal{G}_n$. Then $\bigcup \{\mathcal{U}^K_n: K \in \mathcal{F}_n \}$ is a finite subcollection of $\mathcal{U}_n$, for every $n<\omega$, and therefore there is a point $y \in \mathbb{P} \setminus (\bigcup \{ \bigcup \{\mathcal{U}^K_n: K \in \mathcal{F}_n \}: n < \omega\})$. It follows that $[\{y\}, \mathbb{P}]$ is a non-empty open subset of $Z$ which is disjoint from $\bigcup \{\mathcal{G}_n : n < \omega \}$, thus showing that $Z$ is not weakly Menger.

$\endgroup$
4
  • 2
    $\begingroup$ I just saw that Theorem 2.5 in "Some weak covering properties and infinite games" by Masami Sakai (Cent. Eur. J. Math. • 12(2) • 2014 • 322-329) contains another example, without CH. Apparently the OP's question was asked by Wingers (see Question 2.6 in the same paper). $\endgroup$ Commented Oct 6, 2022 at 7:43
  • 2
    $\begingroup$ Thanks for the reference. That paper actually contains 3 examples answering the OP's question (Theorem 2.4 (a) and (b) and Theorem 2.5). Theorem 2.4 (b) uses a similar idea as my example, but is slightly more complicated. Instead of taking a Luzin subspace of the Pixley-Roy hyperspace of compact nowhere dense subsets of the irrationals, he takes a Luzin subspace of a suitable compactification of the Pixley-Roy hyperspace of finite subsets of the irrationals. In his construction the compactification is needed because the Pixley-Roy hyperspace of finite subsets is almost never Baire. $\endgroup$ Commented Oct 6, 2022 at 8:18
  • $\begingroup$ Thank you so much Santi Spadaro and Mathieu Baillif for the references about my question. All of them are really interesting. Also, the example you @SantiSpadaro gave is nice and simpler than other. I wonder if those examples can be modified to get an example of a space non-Lindelof, having a Lindelof dense subset but not weakly Menger. $\endgroup$
    – J. Casas
    Commented Oct 8, 2022 at 0:19
  • $\begingroup$ @SantiSpadaro I am trying to reach you by email for some time without success, because I'd like to use your example in a small note I am writing. I do not know if you received my emails, but if it is not the case, is there a way to reach you somehow ? (My adress is in my profile.) $\endgroup$ Commented Sep 29 at 21:12

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .