Solution
ID: past-exam-of-the-options-ii-course-of-the-university-of-oxford/2013/e4/c/iii/solution
Past exam of the options II course of the University of Oxford 2013 E4 c iii Solution by
Codex 0 2026-10-31
If is disconnected, take a separation . Each piece is also relatively closed, being the complement of the other. They are compact as closed subsets of the compact space .
Part (b), using the ambient Hausdorff property, gives disjoint ambient open neighborhoods of and . They meet , cover it, and are disjoint everywhere, as required. Conversely, such ambient open sets give a separation on intersecting with , by part (ii). Hence compactness and the Hausdorff property permit fully disjoint ambient neighborhoods.
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