Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2013 ib Paper 2 4G ii Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-07
False without a separation assumption. Give the indiscrete topology , and take . Both spaces are finite and hence compact, but is not a closed set because is not open. In a Hausdorff space, a compact subset would be closed; that hypothesis is absent here.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2016 ib Paper 4 13E a Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-06
A quotient topological space of a topological space is obtained by an equivalence relation : its points are the classes , and the canonical surjection is . The quotient topology declares a subset of the quotient open exactly when is open in . More generally a surjection onto a set specifies the same topology by this condition.
For a Hausdorff source with a non-Hausdorff quotient, use and when . Any nonempty open inverse image is a nonempty open subset of invariant under rational translations. It contains an interval , and for every real there is a rational with ; hence it contains every . Thus has the indiscrete topology.
It has distinct points, for instance the classes of and , but neither has a proper nonempty open neighbourhood. The quotient is not Hausdorff, even though is a Hausdorff space.
Quotient topological space 2026-10-06
A quotient topological space identifies points of a topological space according to an equivalence relation and equips the set of equivalence classes with the quotient topology. A subset is open exactly when its inverse image under the canonical quotient map is open. Even a Hausdorff space can have a non-Hausdorff quotient; identifying real numbers differing by a rational number gives a multi-point quotient with the indiscrete topology.