Compact space

In mathematics, a compact set is a set for which every covering of that set by a collection of sets has a finite subcovering. If the set is a subset of a metric space then compactness is equivalent to the set being closed and totally bounded or, equivalently, that every sequence in the set has a convergent subsequence. For the special case that the set is a subset of a finite dimensional vector space, such as the Euclidean spaces, then compactness is equivalent to that set being closed and bounded.

Cover and subcover of a set

Let A be a subset of a set X. A cover for A is any collection of sets of the form ${\mathcal {U}}=\{A_{\gamma }\mid A_{\gamma }\subset X,\,\gamma \in \Gamma \}$ , where $\Gamma$ is an arbitrary index set, such that $A\subset \cup _{\gamma \in \Gamma }A_{\gamma }$. For any such cover ${\mathcal {U}}$, a set ${\mathcal {U}}'\subset {\mathcal {U}}$ of the form ${\mathcal {U}}'=\{A_{\gamma }\mid A_{\gamma }\subset X,\,\gamma \in \Gamma '\}$ with $\Gamma '\subset \Gamma$ and such that $A\subset \cup _{\gamma \in \Gamma '}A_{\gamma }$ is said to be a subcover of ${\mathcal {U}}$.

Formal definition of compact set

A subset A of a set X is said to be compact if every cover of A has a finite subcover, that is, a sub-cover which contains at most a finite number of subsets of X (or has a finite index set).

See also

Open set

Closed set

Topological space