Searching for Absolute ᘓℛ–Epic Spaces

Abstract

AbstractIn previous papers, Barr and Raphael investigated the situation of a topological space Y and a subspace X such that the induced map C(Y ) → C(X) is an epimorphism in the category ᘓℛ of commutative rings (with units). We call such an embedding a ᘓℛ-epic embedding and we say that X is absolute ᘓℛ-epic if every embedding of X is ᘓℛ-epic. We continue this investigation. Our most notable result shows that a Lindelöf space X is absolute ᘓℛ-epic if a countable intersection of βX-neighbourhoods of X is a βX-neighbourhood of X. This condition is stable under countable sums, the formation of closed subspaces, cozero-subspaces, and being the domain or codomain of a perfect map. A strengthening of the Lindelöf property leads to a new class with the same closure properties that is also closed under finite products. Moreover, all σ-compact spaces and all Lindelöf P-spaces satisfy this stronger condition. We get some results in the non-Lindelöf case that are sufficient to show that the Dieudonné plank and some closely related spaces are absolute ᘓℛ-epic.