PART A TOPOLOGY COURSE: HT 2008

Lecture 15: Quotient spaces, quotient maps

Separation axioms for quotient spaces

Definition 1. A topological space satisfies the first separation axiom if for any two distinct points
a 6= b there exists an open set U containing a and not b.
Proposition 2. A topological space satisfies the first separation axiom if and only if singletons are
closed subsets in it.

The Hausdorff property is also called the second separation axiom.

Proposition 3. (1) A quotient topological space satisfies the first separation axiom if and only if
the equivalence classes are closed.
(2) A quotient topological space is Hausdorff if and only if any two distinct equivalence classes are
contained in two disjoint open saturated sets.
Examples 4. (1) R/Q does not satisfy the first separation axiom.
n n
(2) R /Z is Hausdorff.
(3) The Möbius band (that is [0, 1] × [0, 1]/℘, where ℘ is composed of {(0, y), (1, 1 − y)} with
y ∈ [0, 1] and {(x, y)} with x ∈ (0, 1)) is Hausdorff.

Quotient maps

Proposition 5. Let p be a map of a topological space X onto a topological space Y . The following
conditions are equivalent:
(1) U ⊆ Y is open in Y if and only if p−1 (U ) is open in X ;
(2) V ⊆ Y is closed in Y if and only if p−1 (V ) is closed in X ;
(3) p is continuous, and any image by p of a saturated open set is an open set;
(4) p is continuous, and any image by p of a saturated closed set is a closed set.
Definition 6. A quotient map is a surjective map of topological spaces p : X → Y satisfying one of
the equivalent properties in Proposition 5.