Paper 4, Section II, E

Metric and Topological Spaces | Part IB, 2014

Explain what it means for a metric space to be complete.

Let XX be a metric space. We say the subsets AiA_{i} of XX, with iNi \in \mathbb{N}, form a descending sequence in XX if A1A2A3A_{1} \supset A_{2} \supset A_{3} \supset \cdots.

Prove that the metric space XX is complete if and only if any descending sequence A1A2A_{1} \supset A_{2} \supset \cdots of non-empty closed subsets of XX, such that the diameters of the subsets AiA_{i} converge to zero, has an intersection i=1Ai\bigcap_{i=1}^{\infty} A_{i} that is non-empty.

[Recall that the diameter diam(S)\operatorname{diam}(S) of a set SS is the supremum of the set {d(x,y)\{d(x, y) : x,yS}.]x, y \in S\} .]

Give examples of

(i) a metric space XX, and a descending sequence A1A2A_{1} \supset A_{2} \supset \cdots of non-empty closed subsets of XX, with diam(Ai)\operatorname{diam}\left(A_{i}\right) converging to 0 but i=1Ai=\bigcap_{i=1}^{\infty} A_{i}=\emptyset.

(ii) a descending sequence A1A2A_{1} \supset A_{2} \supset \cdots of non-empty sets in R\mathbb{R} with diam(Ai)\operatorname{diam}\left(A_{i}\right) converging to 0 but i=1Ai=\bigcap_{i=1}^{\infty} A_{i}=\emptyset.

(iii) a descending sequence A1A2A_{1} \supset A_{2} \supset \cdots of non-empty closed sets in R\mathbb{R} with i=1Ai=\bigcap_{i=1}^{\infty} A_{i}=\emptyset.

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