The Space of Closed Subsets of a Convergent Sequence

Abstract

Many topological spaces are simply sets of points (atoms) endowed with a topology. Some spaces, however, have elements that are functions, matrices, or other non-atomic items. Another special type of space has elements that are themselves subsets of another space; these spaces are called hyperspaces. Hyperspaces are metric spaces, and the metric defined on them is called the Hausdorff metric. Hyperspaces wllose points are the closed subsets and hyperspaces whose points are the closed connected subsets (of metric spaces) have been extensively studied. Also, hyperspaces of closed and convex subsets of a bounded convex set in Euclidean space are of great interest in geometry. See Lay [3]. In recent years, geometers and topological dynamicists have explored spaces of closed and bounded subsets of the plane in connection with the study of fractals. One of the major results in the theory is that the hyperspace of closed subsets of a closed interval of real numbers is homeomorphic with the Hilbert cube, and with the space IX, the countable product of unit intervals. For more general information about the Hausdorff metric and spaces of subsets, see Devaney [2] and Sieradski [6]. The main result of this paper is a topological characterization of the space of closed subsets of a convergent sequence of points. The proof given here provides a homneornorphic embedding of the space in the plane, E2. The result was first proved by Pelczynski [5]. He studied arbitrary compact zero-dimensional metric spaces, so his proofs are much more widely applicable, but they are also somewhat technical. Our proof depends only on some well-known results in the theory of metric spaces, and is therefore accessible to advanced undergraduate mathematics majors. We also prove that for no convergent sequence of real numbers is there an isometric embedding of the hyperspace in Euclidean space, E,1, for any n. For other results and discussion, see Nadler [4]. Let (X, d) denote a compact metric space. The hyperspace (2X, D) of X is the metric space whose points are the closed nonempty subsets of X and whose metric is the Hausdorff metric D given by