Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2013 ib Paper 4 13G ii Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-07
Let and be the connected components of and . First, is connected in the product topology. For each , the connected slice meets the connected slice . Their union over is connected by the common-intersection argument, and is exactly .
Now let be the connected component of in . The coordinate projections are continuous, so their images of are connected and contain and . Maximality therefore gives . Conversely, the connected set contains , so it lies in . . This is connected components of a product space; it requires neither local connectedness nor path connectedness.