Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-metric-spaces-and-complex-analysis-course-of-the-university-of-oxford/2023/1/b/ii/solution

The intersection is a closed set because arbitrary intersections of closed sets are closed. Its nonemptiness needs a construction: bounded closed sets need not be compact sets in this setting.
Fix , , and . Recursively choose , for , using the approximation property of an infimum so that
This is possible because and . The two bounds form convergent geometric series, so the triangle inequality shows is a Cauchy sequence. By completeness it converges to some .
For each fixed , all sufficiently late lie in , by nesting. Closedness of gives , and hence . In particular, starting with any proves . Moreover,
For each starting point , let in this bound on its distance to a set . This does not assert that a nearest point exists. It proves . Since , the other directed Hausdorff distance is zero, and
This is the Summably nested Hausdorff intersection theorem; the summable movement replaces any need for compactness.

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