A subset of a metric space is open if for every there exists with , where . The radius may depend on the point. The empty set is open vacuously.
In any topological space a closed subset of a compact set is compact: add its open complement to an open cover and take a finite subcover of the compact set. However, compact subsets need not be closed in a general space. In the indiscrete two-point space a singleton is compact but not closed. Conversely a closed subset need not be compact: itself is closed in but the cover has no finite subcover.
In a Hausdorff space every compact subset is closed. Given , separate and each by disjoint neighborhoods; compactness selects finitely many neighborhoods covering , and the intersection of their companion neighborhoods of misses . Thus the complement is open. Closedness still need not imply compactness, as the same real-line example shows. It does imply compactness if the ambient space is compact.
In a metric space compactness implies boundedness: finitely many radius-one balls cover the set, so their centers have a finite maximal distance from any fixed center and the triangle inequality gives a global bound. The converse is false. An infinite set with discrete metric for is bounded, but its singleton cover has no finite subcover. It is even closed and complete, so closedness plus boundedness alone does not suffice in general metric spaces.
A subset of a metric space is bounded if it lies in a ball of finite radius: there exist a point and such that for every . Equivalently its diameter is finite, with the empty set bounded by convention.
The image is compact: pull any open cover back by the continuous map, use a finite subcover of , then map forward. For a general topological target, closedness is not guaranteed; a continuous image into the indiscrete two-point space can be a nonclosed singleton. No connectedness assertion follows merely from compactness of .
If is metric, is compact, therefore closed in , bounded and totally bounded. It is also complete in its induced metric and sequentially compact. For the latter properties, compact metric spaces have a convergent subsequence of every sequence; a Cauchy sequence with one convergent subsequence converges to that same limit. Total boundedness follows by selecting finitely many balls of each prescribed radius. These are properties of the image itself, irrespective of whether is complete.
A metric space is complete if every Cauchy sequence of its points converges to a point of that same space. The requirement on the location of the limit distinguishes, for example, from its incomplete subspace .
A sequentially compact space is one in which every sequence has a subsequence converging to a point of the space. A limit point of means every open ball around meets .
In a compact metric space, a sequence with a finite set of values has a constant subsequence. If its value set is infinite and had no limit point, each point of the space would have a neighbourhood containing at most one point of that value set. A finite subcover would then make the value set finite, a contradiction. It therefore has a limit point in the space, and the permitted subsequence result gives a convergent subsequence. This proves sequential compactness.
For the remaining assertions assume the compact space is nonempty, as required for a fixed-point claim. The displacement function is continuous by the stated continuity of the metric and of . The extreme value theorem gives a minimum . If , then , and strict decrease of distances implies
contradicting minimality. Thus and is a fixed point. Two distinct fixed points would satisfy , also impossible. Hence the fixed point is unique.
On the noncompact real line, take
Its derivative is strictly between zero and one. The mean value theorem therefore gives for each distinct pair. Yet , so it has no fixed point. Compactness, rather than merely pointwise strict shrinkage, supplies attainment of a zero displacement in the preceding proof.
A metric outer measure on a metric space is an outer measure satisfying
Here . Every Borel set is measurable for a metric outer measure. Consequently its measurable sigma-algebra contains the Borel sigma-algebra; it may be strictly larger.
The Riesz-Markov-Kakutani representation theorem identifies the continuous dual of with the finite complex Radon measures on : every bounded complex-linear functional has a unique representation
The right side is the total variation norm of the measure. On this compact metric space Radon measures are regular Borel measures. A functional is positive precisely when its representing measure is positive; then .
The intended hypothesis is that is not connected. The original PDF has the same grammatical ambiguity as the transcription. If only were assumed not connected, the assertion would fail for the discrete space with its usual metric and the closed subset : two disjoint sets cannot both meet that singleton.
Under the intended reading, choose a separation of a topological space . Both and are nonempty and closed in , because each is the complement of the other relatively open part. Since is closed in , both are closed in .
For a nonempty subset of the metric space , the distance to a set satisfies
Indeed, the triangle inequality gives , and swapping proves the bound. Thus the two distance to a set functions below are continuous. Set
These are disjoint open sets. For , we have and , since is closed and . Hence . Similarly . Therefore and both and meet , as required. The construction is a concrete instance of the normality of every metric space.
False. Take the metric space with the Euclidean distance and subspace topology inherited from . For every , identify with ; leave the two points and in separate equivalence classes. All equivalence classes have one or two points, so all are closed in this metric space.
Let be the two distinct images of the origins. If are any open neighbourhoods of in the quotient space, their preimages contain respectively
for some . Choose . The common image belongs to both and . Therefore the origins have no disjoint open neighbourhoods and the quotient space is not Hausdorff. This is the line with two origins.
Suppose a subset of a metric space is covered by sets, each of diameter at most . Assign each point to one covering set containing it, choosing a single set at shared boundaries. Among points, the pigeonhole principle puts two in a common set, and their distance is at most . The pieces need not be equal or congruent. This freedom permits better distance bounds than dividing a region only into equal rectangles.
Suppose a group acts by isometries on a metric space , and for points in different orbits one has . Then the orbit space with its quotient topology is Hausdorff. Indeed, choose less than one third of this positive infimum and saturate the open radius- balls about and by the action. These saturated sets are open because every acting isometry is a homeomorphism. Their translates cannot meet: their centres stay at least the given positive distance apart. Their disjoint open images in the quotient separate the two orbit points, since the preimage of each image is its saturated set. This applies to the glide reflection on a closed strip: the distance from one point to the translates of another tends to infinity as the integer translation grows, so two distinct orbits have a positive minimum distance.
Product metric Created 2026-10-25 Updated 2026-10-31
For metric spaces and , the sum metric on is the displayed formula. Nonnegativity, symmetry and the triangle inequality follow by adding the respective inequalities in the two factors, and zero distance forces equality in both coordinates. It induces the finite product topology, as does the maximum product metric, since their distances satisfy . A sequence converges for this metric exactly when both coordinate sequences converge. Two successive extractions of a convergent subsequence therefore show that the product of two sequentially compact spaces is sequentially compact.
Projection with a compact factor is closed Created 2026-10-14 Updated 2026-10-31
For metric spaces with compact, the projection with a compact factor is closed: if is a closed set and converges to , choose with . Sequential compactness supplies , so , proving . The projection map is also continuous for the sum metric. Without compactness, the closed set projects to the nonclosed set .
Proximality Created 2026-10-05 Updated 2026-10-14
In a compact metric space with a continuous map , points are proximal if
This property is independent of the compatible metric. If is injective and , arbitrarily small proximal distances must occur at arbitrarily large times, since each finite collection of distances is strictly positive. Proximal points need not be equal or have dense orbits.
p-variation of a path Created 2026-10-14 Updated 2026-10-18
For , the displayed quantity measures the accumulated oscillation of a path in a metric space. For it is total variation. A Hölder continuous path of exponent has finite -variation on a compact interval if . Applying this construction to the Carnot-Carathéodory distance gives the defining regularity of a weak geometric p-rough path.
Real tree Created 2026-09-28 Updated 2026-10-03
A real tree is a metric space in which every pair is joined by a unique arc and that arc is isometric to the real interval . Equivalently, it is a geodesic metric space with no nontrivial simple loops.
Recurrent point 2026-10-14
A point of a dynamical system is recurrent if some sequence of positive times tending to infinity returns its orbit arbitrarily close to the point. In a compact metric space, this is equivalent to the displayed condition. A periodic point is recurrent, but a recurrent point need not be periodic.
In a metric space, applying the triangle inequality in both directions gives . In a normed vector space, its corresponding form is . In particular, distance to a fixed point is a Lipschitz continuous real function.
Separable topological space Created 2026-10-07 Updated 2026-10-14
A topological space is separable when it has a countable dense subset. The topology is part of the assertion: a dual may be separable in its weak-star topology and not in its norm topology. A compact metric space is separable by taking the union of finite nets at scales tending to zero.