Fell topology 2026-10-14
The Fell topology on the closed subsets of a locally compact space has subbasic open sets requiring intersection with an open set or avoidance of a compact set. On a locally compact separable metric space, its sequential convergence says that every convergent subsequence of points from the varying sets has its limit in the limiting set, and every point of the limiting set is approximated by points from the varying sets.
Locally compact group 2026-10-14
A locally compact group is a topological group whose underlying space is a locally compact space. In Haar measure and Fourier transform theory one normally also assumes it is a Hausdorff space. Local compactness supplies compact neighbourhoods, not just compact sets which algebraically generate the group.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2008 iii Paper 9 1 d Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
False. The additive group with its usual metric is a Hausdorff space but not a locally compact space. If a compact set were a neighbourhood of zero, it would contain all rationals in some interval . Choose an irrational in that interval and rational numbers in the real line. All sufficiently late would lie in the compact neighbourhood, so a subsequence would converge in . Its real limit would have to be , a contradiction.
The other suggested example is the additive Hilbert space . A compact neighbourhood of zero would contain a closed ball of some positive radius . The vectors in that ball have pairwise distance , and thus no convergent subsequence. This again contradicts metric compactness. Both examples are topological groups whose operations are continuous, so Hausdorffness cannot supply local compactness.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2009 iii Paper 10 2 Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
A completely regular Hausdorff space is a Hausdorff space in which each point outside a closed set is separated from by a continuous function with and . Put and define the evaluation character by . The weak-star topology on is the topology of pointwise convergence on : its coordinate maps are continuous, and generate the topology. It is Hausdorff, and the dual unit ball is compact in it by the Banach-Alaoglu theorem.
For nonempty , by the supremum norm bound and the constant function . All the coordinates of are continuous, so is continuous. Complete regularity separates distinct points, proving injectivity. To prove continuity of the inverse onto its image, let with open in . Separating from gives a bounded continuous withSuch neighborhoods prove that is a homeomorphism onto . This qualification is essential: it is not onto the whole dual, since the zero functional is not an evaluation on a nonempty space.
Define the Stone-Čech compactification to beThe Banach-Alaoglu theorem makes this a compact Hausdorff space, with identified with its dense evaluation copy. For , the coordinate function is a continuous extension. Density gives . Conversely any restricts to an element of , and because they agree on the dense subset . Restriction and coordinate extension are inverse linear isometries, henceThey also preserve products: the corresponding continuous functions agree on and hence everywhere.
For the universal extension property, let be continuous and a compact Hausdorff space. Pullback defines a bounded linear operator by . Its dual map is weak-star continuous, since . Evaluation is a homeomorphism onto a compact, thus closed, subset: a compact Hausdorff space is completely regular, by the Urysohn lemma. Now , soTherefore is the required continuous extension. Two continuous maps into the Hausdorff space agreeing on the dense subset agree everywhere, proving uniqueness.
If is open in , then it is a locally compact space: around any , regularity of the compact Hausdorff space gives an open neighborhood whose closure is compact and lies in . Conversely, suppose is locally compact. Choose an open neighborhood of in with compact closure . There is an open with . Density of implies , while compactness of makes it closed in , so . Thus . This provesThe empty-space cases are immediate.
The final printed assertion, for an arbitrary subset of , is false. Take the infinite discrete space . It is not compact, so its compactification has a point . The singleton is closed, hence equals its own closure. It is not open, since every nonempty open subset of meets the dense copy of . This is a counterexample.
The valid result holds for subsets , and more generally for open subsets of . For , its indicator is bounded continuous because is discrete. Its extension is still idempotent by density, so it takes only the values zero and one. The set is clopen and has . Density then gives . If is open in , the set is dense in , so is clopen by the result just proved. Consequently is extremally disconnected, which means the closure of every open set is open. This is the discrete Stone-Čech compactifications are extremally disconnected theorem, with the essential open-set qualification.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2021 ii Paper 3 21H d Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-09-25
A locally compact Hausdorff space is regular. Cover by finitely many open sets whose compact closures lie in ; their union satisfies , with compact. The compact Hausdorff space is normal, so the Urysohn lemma gives a continuous function equal to on and on . Extend by zero outside . The boundary values make the extension continuous, and its support is a compact subset of .
Point process Created 2026-10-07 Updated 2026-10-14
A point process records random locations by a random measure that counts them. Examples include arrival times of a queue, positions of stars, and the finite eigenvalue configuration of a random matrix. The count in an observation window is a random variable; its expected value is supplied by the intensity measure of a point process, while its fluctuations and relationships with other windows require more information.
For a precise spatial convention, take with its Borel sigma-algebra and a probability space . A locally finite point process is a measurable function from to the space of locally finite point measures, equipped with the sigma-algebra generated by evaluations for Borel sets . Each realization has the formwhere is finite or countable and repeated locations are allowed; is a Dirac measure. Here a point measure is a counting measure with possible multiplicities, rather than the counting measure of a set of distinct locations.[ref]
Lectures on the Poisson Process by Günter Last and others. Section 2.1, Definition 2.1, printed pp. 10-11: point measures and the sigma-algebra generated by evaluations
Local finiteness means for every bounded Borel set , on a single almost sure event. In it suffices to check the countable collection of balls of integer radius centered at the origin, and this is equivalent to finiteness on every compact set. On a general measurable space there is no notion of boundedness without additional structure: state a metric or an explicit family of observation windows. Another convention on locally compact spaces requires finiteness on compact sets; this need not coincide with finiteness on all bounded sets outside . Local finiteness does not require finitely many points in all of .[ref]
Lectures on the Poisson Process by Günter Last and others. Section 2.4, Definitions 2.11 and 2.13, printed pp. 16-17: bounded-set local finiteness and the countable ball exhaustion
If is a quotient map, then is a quotient map. More generally the second factor may be any locally compact space that is Hausdorff. To prove the assertion, let have open preimage , and take . Choose and a compact neighbourhood of with . The set is open by compactness of , and is saturated under because membership in depends only on and the second coordinate. Hence is open by the quotient topology. The rectangle is a neighbourhood of contained in , proving that is open. This justifies parameterized homotopies defined on quotient spaces.