The Stacks project

Lemma 5.25.2. Let $X$ be a Hausdorff, locally quasi-compact space. There exists a map $X \to X^*$ which identifies $X$ as an open subspace of a quasi-compact Hausdorff space $X^*$ such that $X^* \setminus X$ is a singleton (one point compactification). In particular, the map $X \to \beta (X)$ identifies $X$ with an open subspace of $\beta (X)$.

Proof. Set $X^* = X \amalg \{ \infty \} $. We declare a subset $V$ of $X^*$ to be open if either $V \subset X$ is open in $X$, or $\infty \in V$ and $U = V \cap X$ is an open of $X$ such that $X \setminus U$ is quasi-compact. We omit the verification that this defines a topology. It is clear that $X \to X^*$ identifies $X$ with an open subspace of $X$.

Since $X$ is locally quasi-compact, every point $x \in X$ has a quasi-compact neighbourhood $x \in E \subset X$. Then $E$ is closed (Lemma 5.12.4 part (1)) and $V = (X \setminus E) \amalg \{ \infty \} $ is an open neighbourhood of $\infty $ disjoint from the interior of $E$. Thus $X^*$ is Hausdorff.

Let $X^* = \bigcup V_ i$ be an open covering. Then for some $i$, say $i_0$, we have $\infty \in V_{i_0}$. By construction $Z = X^* \setminus V_{i_0}$ is quasi-compact. Hence the covering $Z \subset \bigcup _{i \not= i_0} Z \cap V_ i$ has a finite refinement which implies that the given covering of $X^*$ has a finite refinement. Thus $X^*$ is quasi-compact.

The map $X \to X^*$ factors as $X \to \beta (X) \to X^*$ by the universal property of the Stone-Čech compactification. Let $\varphi : \beta (X) \to X^*$ be this factorization. Then $X \to \varphi ^{-1}(X)$ is a section to $\varphi ^{-1}(X) \to X$ hence has closed image (Lemma 5.3.3). Since the image of $X \to \beta (X)$ is dense we conclude that $X = \varphi ^{-1}(X)$. $\square$


Comments (2)

Comment #6903 by Shota Inoue on

In the part of the proof showing that is closed, the reference to Lemma 5.12.3 should be replaced by (i) of Lemma 5.12.4.

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  • 2 comment(s) on Section 5.25: Stone-Čech compactification

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