Reflexive objects in topological categories

Abstract

This paper presents several basic results about the non-existence of reflexive objects in cartesian closed topological categories of Hausdorff spaces. In particular, we prove that there are no non-trivial countably compact reflexive objects in the category of Hausdorff k-spaces and, more generally, that any non-trivial reflexive Tychonoff space in this category contains a closed discrete subspace corresponding to a numeral system in the sense of Wadsworth. In addition, we establish that a reflexive Tychonoff space in a cartesian-closed topological category cannot contain a non-trivial continuous image of the unit interval. Therefore, if there exists a non-trivial reflexive Tychonoff space, it does not have a nice geometric structure.