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...

, in the field of topology

Topology

Topology is a major area of mathematics concerned with properties that are preserved under continuous deformations of objects, such as deformations that involve stretching, but no tearing or gluing...

, 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 said to be a shrinking space if every open cover admits a shrinking. A shrinking of an open cover is another open cover indexed by the same indexing set, with the property that the closure of each open set in the shrinking lies inside the corresponding original open set.

The following facts are known about shrinking spaces:

• Every shrinking space is normal
  Normal space
  In topology and related branches of mathematics, a normal space is a topological space X that satisfies Axiom T4: every two disjoint closed sets of X have disjoint open neighborhoods. A normal Hausdorff space is also called a T4 space...
  
  .
• Every shrinking space is countably paracompact.
• In a normal space
  Normal space
  In topology and related branches of mathematics, a normal space is a topological space X that satisfies Axiom T4: every two disjoint closed sets of X have disjoint open neighborhoods. A normal Hausdorff space is also called a T4 space...
  
  , every locally finite, and in fact, every point finite open cover admits a shrinking.
• Thus, every normal metacompact space
  Metacompact space
  In mathematics, in the field of general topology, a topological space is said to be metacompact if every open cover has a point finite open refinement...
  
   is a shrinking space. In particular, every paracompact space
  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 ....
  
   is a shrinking space.

These facts are particularly important because shrinking of open covers is a common technique in the theory of differential manifolds and while constructing functions using a partition of unity.