BASICS OF TOPOLOGY

SLOBODAN N. SIMIĆ

Roughly speaking, topology is the area of mathematics that studies the “shape” of spaces.
More precisely:
Definition 1. A topology on a set X is a collection T of subsets of X such that:
(a) the empty set and X are in T ;
(b) the union of any subcollection of T is in T ;
(c) the intersection of finitely many elements of T is in T .
Definition 2. A topological space is a pair (X, T ), where X is a set and T is a topology on
X.
Definition 3. If T is a topology on X, then each set U ∈ T is called an open set. A set
F ⊂ X is called closed if its complement is open.
Theorem 1. Suppose (X, T ) is a topological space. Then:
(a) The empty set and X are closed.
(b) The intersection of any collection of closed sets is closed.
(c) A finite union of closed sets is closed.
Example 1. If X is any set, then the collection of all subsets of X is a topology on X called
the discrete topology.
Example 2. The topology T = {∅, X} is called the trivial (or indiscrete) topology on X.
Example 3. Let X = Rn and let d(x, y) denote the Euclidean distance between x and y.
For x ∈ Rn and r > 0, denote by
B(x, r) = {y ∈ Rn : d(x, y) < r}
the open ball of radius r centered at x. Call a set U ⊂ Rn open if for every x ∈ U there
exists r > 0 such that B(x, r) ⊂ U . Then the collection of open sets is a topology on Rn
called the Euclidean topology.
Example 4. Let (X, d) be a metric space. This means that X is a set and d : X × X → R
a function satisfying the following properties:
(a) d(x, y) ≥ 0;
(b) d(x, y) = 0 if and only if x = y;
(c) d(y, x) = d(x, y) (symmetry);
(d) d(x, y) ≤ d(x, z) + d(z, y) (the triangle inequality),
for all x, y, z ∈ X. For each x ∈ X and r > 0, denote by
B(x, r) = {y ∈ X : d(x, y) < r}

Date: January 28, 2009.

the open ball of radius r centered at x. Call a set U ⊂ X open if for every x ∈ U there exists
r > 0 such that B(x, r) ⊂ U . Then the collection of open sets is a topology on X called the
metric space topology.
Definition 4. A topological space (X, T ) is called Hausdorff if for every two distinct points
x, y ∈ X there exist disjoint open sets U, V such that x ∈ U and y ∈ V . That is, every two
distinct points can be separated by open sets.
Theorem 2. Every metric space is Hausdorff.
Definition 5. A collection E = {Ei : i ∈ I} of sets is called a cover of E if the union of E
contains E, i.e., [
E⊂ Ei .
i∈I
A cover {Ei } is called open if each Ei is an open set. It is called finite if I is finite.
Definition 6. A subset K of a topological space X is called compact if every open cover of
K has a finite subcover. That is, for every open cover U = {Ui : i ∈ I} of K there is a finite
subcollection {Ui1 , . . . , Uik } ⊂ U such that
K ⊂ Ui1 ∪ · · · ∪ Uik .
Theorem 3 (Heine-Borel). In Rn a set is compact if and only if it is closed and bounded.1
Theorem 4. A set K ⊂ Rn is compact if and only if every sequence in K has a convergent
subsequence. That is, for every sequence (xk ) there exists a subsequence (xki ) which converges
to an element of K.
Definition 7. A topological space X is disconnected if it is the union of two open, nonempty
disjoint sets. Otherwise, it is called connected.
Example 5. Rn is connected for every n. {0, 1} is disconnected.
Theorem 5. The following statements are equivalent:
(a) X is connected.
(b) The only subsets of X that are both open and closed are ∅ and X.
(c) Every continuous function f : X → {0, 1} is constant.
Definition 8. A topological space (X0 , T0 ) is called a (topological) subspace of (X, T ) if
X0 ⊂ X and for every U ∈ T0 there exists V ∈ T such that U = V ∩ X0 .
Example 6. If m < n, then Rm is a subspace of Rn , where Rm is identified with Rm ×
{(0, . . . , 0)} (n − m zeros).
Definition 9. A collection B of open subsets of a topological space X is called a basis for a
topology on X if:
(a) B covers X;
(b) if x ∈ B1 ∩ B2 , for some B1 , B2 ∈ B, then there exists B ∈ B such that x ∈ B and
B ⊂ B1 ∩ B2 .
Definition 10. If B is a basis for a topology on X, then the topology T generated by B
is defined as follows: U ⊂ X is said to be open (i.e., U ∈ T ) if for each x ∈ U there exists
B ∈ B such that x ∈ B and B ⊂ U .
1That is, contained in a ball B(0, r), for some r > 0.
 BASICS OF TOPOLOGY 3

Definition 11. A topological space is called second countable if it has a countable basis.
Example 7. Rn is second countable. Let {q1 , q2 , . . .} be an enumeration of all points with
rational coordinates in Rn and let {r1 , r2 , . . .} be an enumeration of all positive rational
numbers. Then the collection of open balls B(qi , rj ) forms a basis for the Euclidean topology
on Rn and is countable.
Definition 12. A map f : X → Y between topological spaces is continuous if for every set
V open in Y , its preimage f −1 (V ) = {x ∈ X : f (x) ∈ V } is open in X.
Theorem 6. Suppose f : X → Y is continuous. If K ⊂ X is compact, then f (K) = {f (x) :
x ∈ K} is compact. If C ⊂ X is connected, then f (C) is connected.
Definition 13. A continuous bijection f : X → Y whose inverse is also continuous is called a
homeomorphism. If f : X → Y is a homeomorphism, then X and Y are called homeomorphic.
Example 8. Any open interval (a, b) is homeomorphic to R. The open unit disk D in R2 is
homeomorphic to R2 .
Example 9. The map φ : [0, 2π) → S 1 , where S 1 is the unit circle, defined by φ(t) =
(cos t, sin t) is a continuous bijection, but its inverse is not continuous. Thus φ is not a
homeomorphism. This can also be seen as follows: if φ−1 were continuous, then φ−1 (S 1 ) =
[0, 2π) would be compact, which is not the case.
Theorem 7 (Invariance of domain). If m 6= n, then Rm is not homeomorphic to Rn .
Let X be a topological space and∼ an equivalence relation on X. Denote by π : X → X/ ∼
the quotient map,
π(x) = [x],
where [x] denotes the equivalence class of x. Declare a set V ⊂ X/ ∼ to be open in X/ ∼ if
and only if its preimage π −1 (U ) is open in X. This defines a topology on X/ ∼ called the
quotient topology.
Definition 14. The space X/ ∼ equipped with the quotient topology is called the quotient
space of X (relative to ∼).
Example 10. Let X = R and define x ∼ y if and only if x − y is an integer. Then ∼ is an
equivalence relation and R/ ∼ is homeomorphic to the unit circle S 1 .
Theorem 8. We have:
(a) π : X → X/ ∼ is continuous.
(b) Suppose the maps f : X/ ∼→ Y and g : X → Y satisfy g = f ◦ π. Then f is
continuous if and only if g is continuous.
For the “rest” of general topology, you can check the following references:
• K. Janich, Topology, Springer, 1984;
• J. Munkres, Topology, second edition, Prentice Hall, 2000
Department of Mathematics, San José State University, San José, CA 95192-0103
E-mail address: simic@math.sjsu.edu