Subspace topology

In topology and related areas of mathematics, a subspace of a topological space X is a subset S of X which is equipped with a topology induced from that of X called the subspace topology (or the relative topology, or the induced topology, or the trace topology).

Definition

Given a topological space and a subset of , the subspace topology on is defined by

That is, a subset of is open in the subspace topology if and only if it is the intersection of with an open set in . If is equipped with the subspace topology then it is a topological space in its own right, and is called a subspace of . Subsets of topological spaces are usually assumed to be equipped with the subspace topology unless otherwise stated.

Alternatively we can define the subspace topology for a subset of as the coarsest topology for which the inclusion map

is continuous.

More generally, suppose is an injection from a set to a topological space . Then the subspace topology on is defined as the coarsest topology for which is continuous. The open sets in this topology are precisely the ones of the form for open in . is then homeomorphic to its image in (also with the subspace topology) and is called a topological embedding.