The Baire category theorem says that in a nonempty complete metric space, every countable intersection of open dense sets is dense. To prove it, start in an arbitrary nonempty open set and let be open dense. Inductively choose closed balls with , contained in and in the interior of the previous ball, with the first also contained in . Density provides a point at each stage, and openness permits the smaller closed ball. The centers are a Cauchy sequence; completeness supplies a limit lying in every closed ball, hence in . The proof also works at isolated points, where sufficiently small balls are singletons.
The incomplete metric space is a counterexample: it is the countable union of its closed nowhere dense singletons, so the complements are open dense with empty intersection.
For the sequence in the problem, put
Each is closed by continuity. Pointwise convergence makes each point's values a Cauchy sequence, so . By the Baire category theorem, one has nonempty relative interior, which contains a nonempty open interval in . This proves the required common tail bound.
If continuous converged pointwise to the rationality indicator, take and let in this bound. On , for . Hence a fixed continuous is at least at every rational point and at most at every irrational point of . The density of both sets contradicts continuity. Thus the rationality indicator is not a pointwise limit of continuous functions.
Nevertheless are continuous and converge pointwise to for , . This limit is discontinuous at : a pointwise limit of continuous functions can be discontinuous.
A metric space metric satisfies positivity, exactly when , symmetry, and the triangle inequality. A subset is an open set when every has some with the open ball .
Both and are open. An arbitrary union of open sets is open because a point lies in one member supplying a ball. A finite intersection is open because the minimum of the finitely many available radii supplies a ball. Thus the metric-open sets satisfy the topology axioms.
For , the Cauchy-Schwarz inequality gives , so the topology is at least as fine as the topology. To see strictness, define the continuous triangular spikes
Then
Thus converges to zero in the L1 norm but not in the L2 norm. The two metrics induce different topologies.
A metric space is complete when every Cauchy sequence converges to a point of the space.
Let be a Cauchy sequence in , where . For each positive integer , choose such that
This inequality says that the first coordinates of and agree. Consequently each coordinate is eventually constant. Let be its eventual value and put .
For , the first coordinates of agree with those of , so
As is arbitrary, . Therefore
A subset of a metric space is nowhere dense when the interior of its closure is empty. One form of the Baire category theorem says that a nonempty complete metric space cannot be a countable union of nowhere dense closed sets; equivalently, a countable intersection of dense open sets is dense.
Fix and work in the complete interval . For define the closed set
The sets are closed by the continuity of , and the assumed pointwise convergence gives . The Baire category theorem therefore gives an and a nonempty open interval contained in .
The intervals overlap once , which holds for every sufficiently large natural number . Their union consequently contains a half-line. Every sufficiently large can therefore be written as with and , and then . Since was arbitrary, as .
For nonempty compact subsets of a metric space , the Hausdorff distance is
For compact metric spaces , the Gromov-Hausdorff distance is
where and range over isometric embeddings into a common metric space .
The collection of compact real trees is not compact in the Gromov-Hausdorff topology. Indeed, the intervals are compact real trees and
Their diameters are unbounded, so has no convergent subsequence in the Gromov-Hausdorff topology.
Let be disjoint closed subsets of the metric space ; the cases where one is empty are immediate. The distance functions
are continuous, because each is 1-Lipschitz. Their sum is strictly positive: if both distances vanished, closedness would put in . Therefore
is continuous, equals zero on , and equals one on . The sets
are disjoint open neighbourhoods of and . Thus every metric space is a normal topological space; this is the normality of every metric space.
Weak convergence of probability measures on a metric space means that
for every bounded continuous real function . Weak convergence of random variables means weak convergence of their probability distributions; equivalently,
for every bounded continuous .
A computational problem in the SCI hierarchy is a quadruple
Here is the primary set of inputs, is the set of permitted evaluation functions, is the output metric space, and is the problem function. The Solvability complexity index is defined from the minimum height of a tower of algorithms that computes from finite subsets of .
For the classical computational spectral problem, take
and
Since the spectrum of a bounded operator is a nonempty compact subset of the complex numbers, one may take to be the nonempty compact subsets of with the Hausdorff distance. The Attouch--Wets topology gives an equivalent convenient formulation on bounded spectral sets and also extends naturally to unbounded closed sets. This choice of makes convergence mean convergence of the whole spectrum as a set, including both the absence of persistent spectral pollution and the approximation of every genuine spectral point.
Proximality 2026-10-05
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.
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.
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.
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.
Sequentially closed set 2026-10-05
A sequentially closed set is one that contains every limit of its convergent sequences. This is weaker than being a closed set in a general topological space, but the two conditions agree in metric spaces.
Topological dynamics Created 2026-10-05 Updated 2026-10-06
Topological dynamics studies continuous maps and their orbits on topological spaces. For a compact metric space and a continuous map , the pair is a compact Hausdorff topological dynamical system.
For a uniquely ergodic continuous map of a compact metric space, every continuous satisfies uniformly in . Otherwise choose increasingly long orbit empirical measures with a fixed discrepancy. Compactness provides a weak limit; the telescoping identity makes it invariant, so it must be the unique measure , contradicting that discrepancy. Compactness and continuity are essential hypotheses.
Uniform metric 2026-10-07
The supremum of pointwise distances defines a metric on maps when it is finite, for example if the target metric space is bounded. Convergence in this metric is uniform convergence. If the target is complete, Cauchy sequences have pointwise limits and the Cauchy estimate makes convergence uniform.
Unique ergodicity 2026-10-05
A continuous self-map of a compact metric space is uniquely ergodic when it has exactly one invariant Borel probability measure. An irrational rotation of the circle is uniquely ergodic: invariance multiplies its nonzero-index Fourier coefficients by nontrivial phases, forcing those coefficients to vanish. The Stone-Weierstrass theorem then identifies the invariant measure as normalized Lebesgue measure.