Countably compact space

In mathematics

Mathematics

Mathematics is the study of quantity, space, structure, and change. Mathematicians seek out patterns and formulate new conjectures. Mathematicians resolve the truth or falsity of conjectures by mathematical proofs, which are arguments sufficient to convince other mathematicians of their validity...

 a topological space

Topological space

Topological spaces are mathematical structures that allow the formal definition of concepts such as convergence, connectedness, and continuity. They appear in virtually every branch of modern mathematics and are a central unifying notion...

 is countably compact if every countable open cover has a finite subcover.

Examples and Properties

A compact space

Compact space

In mathematics, specifically general topology and metric topology, a compact space is an abstract mathematical space whose topology has the compactness property, which has many important implications not valid in general spaces...

 is countably compact. Indeed, directly from the definitions, a space is compact if and only if it is both countably compact and Lindelöf

Lindelöf space

In mathematics, a Lindelöf space is a topological space in which every open cover has a countable subcover. The Lindelöf property is a weakening of the more commonly used notion of compactness, which requires the existence of a finite subcover....

.

The example of the set of all real numbers with the standard topology shows that neither local compactness

Locally compact space

In topology and related branches of mathematics, a topological space is called locally compact if, roughly speaking, each small portion of the space looks like a small portion of a compact space.-Formal definition:...

 nor σ-compactness nor paracompactness

Paracompact space

In mathematics, a paracompact space is a topological space in which every open cover admits a locally finite open refinement. Paracompact spaces are sometimes also required to be Hausdorff. Paracompact spaces were introduced by ....

 imply countable compactness.

A countably compact space is always limit point compact

Limit point compact

In mathematics, a topological space X is said to be limit point compact or weakly countably compact if every infinite subset of X has a limit point in X. This property generalizes a property of compact spaces. In a metric space, limit point compactness, compactness, and sequential compactness are...

. For metrizable spaces, countable compactness, sequential compactness, limit point compactness and compactness are all equivalent. The first uncountable ordinal

First uncountable ordinal

In mathematics, the first uncountable ordinal, traditionally denoted by ω1 or sometimes by Ω, is the smallest ordinal number that, considered as a set, is uncountable. It is the supremum of all countable ordinals...

 (with the order topology

Order topology

In mathematics, an order topology is a certain topology that can be defined on any totally ordered set. It is a natural generalization of the topology of the real numbers to arbitrary totally ordered sets...

) is an example of a countably compact space that is not compact.