Closure (topology)

For other uses, see Closure (disambiguation).

In mathematics, the closure of a subset S in a topological space consists of all points in S plus the limit points of S. The closure of S is also defined as the union of S and its boundary. Intuitively, these are all the points in S and "near" S. A point which is in the closure of S is a point of closure of S. The notion of closure is in many ways dual to the notion of interior.

Definitions

Point of closure

For S a subset of a Euclidean space, x is a point of closure of S if every open ball centered at x contains a point of S (this point may be x itself).

This definition generalises to any subset S of a metric space X. Fully expressed, for X a metric space with metric d, x is a point of closure of S if for every r > 0, there is a y in S such that the distance d(x, y) < r. (Again, we may have x = y.) Another way to express this is to say that x is a point of closure of S if the distance d(x, S) := inf{d(x, s) : s in S} = 0.

This definition generalises to topological spaces by replacing "open ball" or "ball" with "neighbourhood". Let S be a subset of a topological space X. Then x is a point of closure (or adherent point) of S if every neighbourhood of x contains a point of S.[1] Note that this definition does not depend upon whether neighbourhoods are required to be open.

Limit point

The definition of a point of closure is closely related to the definition of a limit point. The difference between the two definitions is subtle but important namely, in the definition of limit point, every neighborhood of the point x in question must contain a point of the set other than x itself.

Thus, every limit point is a point of closure, but not every point of closure is a limit point. A point of closure which is not a limit point is an isolated point. In other words, a point x is an isolated point of S if it is an element of S and if there is a neighbourhood of x which contains no other points of S other than x itself.[2]

For a given set S and point x, x is a point of closure of S if and only if x is an element of S or x is a limit point of S (or both).

Closure of a set

The closure of a set S is the set of all points of closure of S, that is, the set S together with all of its limit points.[3] The closure of S is denoted cl(S), Cl(S), \scriptstyle\bar{S} or \scriptstyle S^-. The closure of a set has the following properties.[4]

Sometimes the second or third property above is taken as the definition of the topological closure, which still make sense when applied to other types of closures (see below).[5]

In a first-countable space (such as a metric space), cl(S) is the set of all limits of all convergent sequences of points in S. For a general topological space, this statement remains true if one replaces "sequence" by "net" or "filter".

Note that these properties are also satisfied if "closure", "superset", "intersection", "contains/containing", "smallest" and "closed" are replaced by "interior", "subset", "union", "contained in", "largest", and "open". For more on this matter, see closure operator below.

Examples

Consider a sphere in 3 dimensions. Implicitly there are two regions of interest created by this sphere; the sphere itself and its interior (which is called an open 3-ball). It is useful to be able to distinguish between the interior of 3-ball and the surface, so we distinguish between the open 3-ball, and the closed 3-ball - the closure of the 3-ball. The closure of the open 3-ball is the open 3-ball plus the surface.

In topological space:

Giving R and C the standard (metric) topology:

On the set of real numbers one can put other topologies rather than the standard one.

These examples show that the closure of a set depends upon the topology of the underlying space. The last two examples are special cases of the following.

The closure of a set also depends upon in which space we are taking the closure. For example, if X is the set of rational numbers, with the usual relative topology induced by the Euclidean space R, and if S = {q in Q : q2 > 2, q > 0}, then S is closed in Q, and the closure of S in Q is S; however, the closure of S in the Euclidean space R is the set of all real numbers greater than or equal to \sqrt2.

Closure operator

A closure operator on a set X is a mapping of the power set of X, \mathcal{P}(X), into itself which satisfies the Kuratowski closure axioms.

Given a topological space (X, \mathcal{T}), the mapping  : SS for all SX is a closure operator on X. Conversely, if c is a closure operator on a set X, a topological space is obtained by defining the sets S with c(S) = S as closed sets (so their complements are the open sets of the topology).[6]

The closure operator is dual to the interior operator o, in the sense that

S = X \ (X \ S)o

and also

So = X \ (X \ S)

where X denotes the underlying set of the topological space containing S, and the backslash refers to the set-theoretic difference.

Therefore, the abstract theory of closure operators and the Kuratowski closure axioms can be easily translated into the language of interior operators, by replacing sets with their complements.

Facts about closures

The set S is closed if and only if Cl(S)=S. In particular:

If A is a subspace of X containing S, then the closure of S computed in A is equal to the intersection of A and the closure of S computed in X: Cl_A(S) = A\cap Cl_X(S). In particular, S is dense in A if and only if A is a subset of Cl_X(S).

Categorical interpretation

One may elegantly define the closure operator in terms of universal arrows, as follows.

The powerset of a set X may be realized as a partial order category P in which the objects are subsets and the morphisms are inclusions A \to B whenever A is a subset of B. Furthermore, a topology T on X is a subcategory of P with inclusion functor I: T \to P. The set of closed subsets containing a fixed subset A \subseteq X can be identified with the comma category  (A \downarrow I). This category also a partial order then has initial object Cl(A). Thus there is a universal arrow from A to I, given by the inclusion A \to Cl(A).

Similarly, since every closed set containing X \ A corresponds with an open set contained in A we can interpret the category  (I \downarrow X \setminus A) as the set of open subsets contained in A, with terminal object \text{int}(A), the interior of A.

All properties of the closure can be derived from this definition and a few properties of the above categories. Moreover, this definition makes precise the analogy between the topological closure and other types of closures (for example algebraic), since all are examples of universal arrows.

See also

Notes

  1. Schubert, p. 20
  2. Kuratowski, p. 75
  3. Hocking Young, p. 4
  4. Croom, p. 104
  5. Gemignani, p. 55, Pervin, p. 40 and Baker, p. 38 use the second property as the definition.
  6. Pervin, p. 41

References

External links

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