Tychonoff's

theorem

In mathematics, Tychonoff's theorem states that the product of any collection of

compact topological spaces is compact with respect to the product topology. The
theorem is named after Andrey Nikolayevich Tikhonov (whose surname sometimes is
transcribed Tychonoff), who proved it first in 1930 for powers of the closed unit
interval and in 1935 stated the full theorem along with the remark that its proof was
the same as for the special case. The earliest known published proof is contained in a
1935 article by Tychonoff, "Über einen Funktionenraum".[1]

Tychonoff's theorem is often considered as perhaps the single most important result
in general topology (along with Urysohn's lemma).[2] The theorem is also valid for
topological spaces based on fuzzy sets.[3]

Topological definitions
The theorem depends crucially upon the precise definitions of compactness and of
the product topology; in fact, Tychonoff's 1935 paper defines the product topology for
the first time. Conversely, part of its importance is to give confidence that these
particular definitions are the most useful (i.e. most well-behaved) ones.
Indeed, the Heine–Borel definition of compactness—that every covering of a space by
open sets admits a finite subcovering—is relatively recent. More popular in the 19th
and early 20th centuries was the Bolzano-Weierstrass criterion that every bounded
infinite sequence admits a convergent subsequence, now called sequential
compactness. These conditions are equivalent for metrizable spaces, but neither one
implies the other in the class of all topological spaces.

It is almost trivial to prove that the product of two sequentially compact spaces is
sequentially compact—one passes to a subsequence for the first component and
then a subsubsequence for the second component. An only slightly more elaborate
"diagonalization" argument establishes the sequential compactness of a countable
product of sequentially compact spaces. However, the product of continuum many
copies of the closed unit interval (with its usual topology) fails to be sequentially
compact with respect to the product topology, even though it is compact by
Tychonoff's theorem (e.g., see Wilansky 1970, p. 134).

This is a critical failure: if X is a completely regular Hausdorff space, there is a natural

embedding from X into [0,1]C(X,[0,1]), where C(X,[0,1]) is the set of continuous maps
from X to [0,1]. The compactness of [0,1]C(X,[0,1]) thus shows that every completely
regular Hausdorff space embeds in a compact Hausdorff space (or, can be
"compactified".) This construction is the Stone–Čech compactification. Conversely, all
subspaces of compact Hausdorff spaces are completely regular Hausdorff, so this
characterizes the completely regular Hausdorff spaces as those that can be
compactified. Such spaces are now called Tychonoff spaces.

Applications
Tychonoff's theorem has been used to prove many other mathematical theorems.
These include theorems about compactness of certain spaces such as the Banach–
Alaoglu theorem on the weak-* compactness of the unit ball of the dual space of a
normed vector space, and the Arzelà–Ascoli theorem characterizing the sequences of
functions in which every subsequence has a uniformly convergent subsequence. They
also include statements less obviously related to compactness, such as the De
Bruijn–Erdős theorem stating that every minimal k-chromatic graph is finite, and the
Curtis–Hedlund–Lyndon theorem providing a topological characterization of cellular
automata.

As a rule of thumb, any sort of construction that takes as input a fairly general object
(often of an algebraic, or topological-algebraic nature) and outputs a compact space
is likely to use Tychonoff: e.g., the Gelfand space of maximal ideals of a commutative
C*-algebra, the Stone space of maximal ideals of a Boolean algebra, and the
Berkovich spectrum of a commutative Banach ring.

Proofs of Tychonoff's
theorem
1) Tychonoff's 1930 proof used the concept of a complete accumulation point.

2) The theorem is a quick corollary of the Alexander subbase theorem.

More modern proofs have been motivated by the following considerations: the
approach to compactness via convergence of subsequences leads to a simple and
transparent proof in the case of countable index sets. However, the approach to
convergence in a topological space using sequences is sufficient when the space
satisfies the first axiom of countability (as metrizable spaces do), but generally not
otherwise. However, the product of uncountably many metrizable spaces, each with
at least two points, fails to be first countable. So it is natural to hope that a suitable
notion of convergence in arbitrary spaces will lead to a compactness criterion
generalizing sequential compactness in metrizable spaces that will be as easily
applied to deduce the compactness of products. This has turned out to be the case.

3) The theory of convergence via filters, due to Henri Cartan and developed by
Bourbaki in 1937, leads to the following criterion: assuming the ultrafilter lemma, a
space is compact if and only if each ultrafilter on the space converges. With this in
hand, the proof becomes easy: the (filter generated by the) image of an ultrafilter on
the product space under any projection map is an ultrafilter on the factor space,
which therefore converges, to at least one xi. One then shows that the original
ultrafilter converges to x = (xi). In his textbook, Munkres gives a reworking of the
Cartan–Bourbaki proof that does not explicitly use any filter-theoretic language or
preliminaries.

4) Similarly, the Moore–Smith theory of convergence via nets, as supplemented by

Kelley's notion of a universal net, leads to the criterion that a space is compact if and
only if each universal net on the space converges. This criterion leads to a proof
(Kelley, 1950) of Tychonoff's theorem, which is, word for word, identical to the
Cartan/Bourbaki proof using filters, save for the repeated substitution of "universal
net" for "ultrafilter base".

5) A proof using nets but not universal nets was given in 1992 by Paul Chernoff.

Tychonoff's theorem and

the axiom of choice
All of the above proofs use the axiom of choice (AC) in some way. For instance, the
third proof uses that every filter is contained in an ultrafilter (i.e., a maximal filter), and
this is seen by invoking Zorn's lemma. Zorn's lemma is also used to prove Kelley's
theorem, that every net has a universal subnet. In fact these uses of AC are essential:
in 1950 Kelley proved that Tychonoff's theorem implies the axiom of choice in ZF.
Note that one formulation of AC is that the Cartesian product of a family of nonempty
sets is nonempty; but since the empty set is most certainly compact, the proof cannot
proceed along such straightforward lines. Thus Tychonoff's theorem joins several
other basic theorems (e.g. that every vector space has a basis) in being equivalent to
AC.

On the other hand, the statement that every filter is contained in an ultrafilter does not
imply AC. Indeed, it is not hard to see that it is equivalent to the Boolean prime ideal
theorem (BPI), a well-known intermediate point between the axioms of Zermelo-
Fraenkel set theory (ZF) and the ZF theory augmented by the axiom of choice (ZFC). A
first glance at the second proof of Tychnoff may suggest that the proof uses no more
than (BPI), in contradiction to the above. However, the spaces in which every
convergent filter has a unique limit are precisely the Hausdorff spaces. In general we
t l t f h l t f th i d t l t f th t t f
limits of the projected ultrafilter base, and of course this uses AC. However, it also
shows that the compactness of the product of compact Hausdorff spaces can be
proved using (BPI), and in fact the converse also holds. Studying the strength of
Tychonoff's theorem for various restricted classes of spaces is an active area in set-
theoretic topology.

The analogue of Tychonoff's theorem in pointless topology does not require any form
of the axiom of choice.

Proof of the axiom of

choice from Tychonoff's
theorem
To prove that Tychonoff's theorem in its general version implies the axiom of choice,
we establish that every infinite cartesian product of non-empty sets is nonempty. The
trickiest part of the proof is introducing the right topology. The right topology, as it
turns out, is the cofinite topology with a small twist. It turns out that every set given
this topology automatically becomes a compact space. Once we have this fact,
Tychonoff's theorem can be applied; we then use the finite intersection property (FIP)
definition of compactness. The proof itself (due to J. L. Kelley) follows:

Let {Ai} be an indexed family of nonempty sets, for i ranging in I (where I is an arbitrary
indexing set). We wish to show that the cartesian product of these sets is nonempty.
Now, for each i, take Xi to be Ai with the index i itself tacked on (renaming the indices
using the disjoint union if necessary, we may assume that i is not a member of Ai, so
simply take Xi = Ai ∪ {i}).

Now define the cartesian product

along with the natural projection maps πi which take a member of X to its ith term.
We give each Xj the topology whose open sets are: the empty set, the singleton {i}, the
set Xi. This makes Xi compact, and by Tychonoff's theorem, X is also compact (in the
product topology). The projection maps are continuous; all the Ai's are closed, being
complements of the singleton open set {i} in Xi. So the inverse images πi−1(Ai) are
closed subsets of X. We note that

and prove that these inverse images have the FIP. Let i1, ..., iN be a finite collection of
indices in I. Then the finite product Ai × ... × Ai is non-empty (only finitely many
1 N

choices here, so AC is not needed); it merely consists of N-tuples. Let a = (a1, ..., aN)
be such an N-tuple. We extend a to the whole index set: take a to the function f
defined by f(j) = ak if j = ik, and f(j) = j otherwise. This step is where the addition of the
extra point to each space is crucial, for it allows us to define f for everything outside of
the N-tuple in a precise way without choices (we can already choose, by construction,
j from Xj ). πi (f) = ak is obviously an element of each Ai so that f is in each inverse
k k

image; thus we have

By the FIP definition of compactness, the entire intersection over I must be nonempty,
and the proof is complete.

See also

Alexander's sub-base theorem –

Collection of subsets that generate
a topology
Compactness theorem
 Tube lemma – proof in topology

Notes

1. Tikhonov, Andrey Nikolayevich

(1935), "Über einen
Funktionraum", Mathematische
Annalen (in German) (111): 762–
766

2. Willard, Stephen (2004), General

Topology, Dover, p. 120, ISBN 978-
0-486-43479-7

3. Goguen, Joseph (September

1973), "The Fuzzy Tychonoff
Theorem", Journal of
 Mathematical Analysis and
Applications, 43 (3): 734–742

References

Chernoff, Paul R. (1992), "A simple

proof of Tychonoff's theorem via
nets", American Mathematical
Monthly, 99 (10): 932–934,
doi:10.2307/2324485 (https://doi.o
rg/10.2307%2F2324485) ,
JSTOR 2324485 (https://www.jstor.
org/stable/2324485) .
Johnstone, Peter T. (1982), Stone
spaces, Cambridge Studies in
Advanced Mathematics, vol. 3, New
York: Cambridge University Press,
ISBN 0-521-23893-5.
Johnstone, Peter T. (1981),
"Tychonoff's theorem without the
axiom of choice", Fundamenta
Mathematicae, 113: 21–35,
doi:10.4064/fm-113-1-21-35 (http
s://doi.org/10.4064%2Ffm-113-1-2
1-35) .
Kelley, John L. (1950),
"Convergence in topology", Duke
Mathematical Journal, 17 (3): 277–
283, doi:10.1215/S0012-7094-50-
01726-1 (https://doi.org/10.1215%
2FS0012-7094-50-01726-1) .
Kelley, John L. (1950), "The
Tychonoff product theorem implies
the axiom of choice", Fundamenta
Mathematicae, 37: 75–76,
doi:10.4064/fm-37-1-75-76 (https://
doi.org/10.4064%2Ffm-37-1-75-7
6) .
Munkres, James R. (2000),
Topology (Second ed.), Upper
Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, Inc,
ISBN 978-0-13-181629-9,
OCLC 42683260 (https://search.wo
rldcat.org/oclc/42683260)
Tychonoff, Andrey N. (1930), "Über
die topologische Erweiterung von
Räumen", Mathematische Annalen
(in German), 102 (1): 544–561,
doi:10.1007/BF01782364 (https://d
oi.org/10.1007%2FBF01782364) .
Wilansky, A. (1970), Topology for
Analysis, Ginn and Company

Willard, Stephen (2004) [1970],

General Topology (https://books.go
ogle.com/books?id=-o8xJQ7Ag2c
C) , Mineola, N.Y.: Dover
Publications, ISBN 978-0-486-
43479-7, OCLC 115240 (https://sea
rch.worldcat.org/oclc/115240)
Wright, David G. (1994),
"Tychonoff's theorem.", Proc. Amer.
Math. Soc., 120 (3): 985–987,
 doi:10.1090/s0002-9939-1994-
1170549-2 (https://doi.org/10.109
0%2Fs0002-9939-1994-1170549-
2) .

External links

Tychonoff's theorem at ProofWiki

Mizar system proof:
http://mizar.org/version/current/ht
ml/yellow17.html#T23

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