Paper 2, Section I, H

Metric and Topological Spaces | Part IB, 2010

On the set Q\mathbb{Q} of rational numbers, the 3 -adic metric d3d_{3} is defined as follows: for x,yQx, y \in \mathbb{Q}, define d3(x,x)=0d_{3}(x, x)=0 and d3(x,y)=3nd_{3}(x, y)=3^{-n}, where nn is the integer satisfying xy=3nux-y=3^{n} u where uu is a rational number whose denominator and numerator are both prime to 3 .

(1) Show that this is indeed a metric on Q\mathbb{Q}.

(2) Show that in (Q,d3)\left(\mathbb{Q}, d_{3}\right), we have 3n03^{n} \rightarrow 0 as nn \rightarrow \infty while 3n3^{-n} \nrightarrow \infty as nn \rightarrow \infty. Let dd be the usual metric d(x,y)=xyd(x, y)=|x-y| on Q\mathbb{Q}. Show that neither the identity map (Q,d)(Q,d3)(\mathbb{Q}, d) \rightarrow\left(\mathbb{Q}, d_{3}\right) nor its inverse is continuous.

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