Thread: A question in topological group

Hey guys, I was just thinking of a question in topological group. Suppose A and B are two closed sets in a topological group, then A*B is closed. Can any of you help me think of a counter example of this please? Or, if you think it is true, then you may prove it.

Thanks a lot.

Originally Posted by luoginator

Hey guys, I was just thinking of a question in topological group. Suppose A and B are two closed sets in a topological group, then A*B is closed. Can any of you help me think of a counter example of this please? Or, if you think it is true, then you may prove it.

This need not be true even in an Abelian group. For example, a normed vector space is a topological group under addition (just ignore the scalar multiplication), and it is possible for the sum of two closed subspaces to be non-closed. A specific example of that is given here.

Thanks, but what about the multiplication. A*B means a*b for a belongs to A and b belongs to B. Thanks

I have a counterexample:
Take the multiplicative group of the reals




are closed in G, but

isn't.

Nice Counter Example. thx

Originally Posted by luoginator

Thanks, but what about the multiplication. A*B means a*b for a belongs to A and b belongs to B. Thanks

A vector space is an additive group, so the group operation is addition.

Iondor's example is a lot simpler and neater than the one I gave. But the vector space example shows that you can even take A and B to be closed subgroups of a topological group, and their "product" (which is their sum in this case) can still fail to be closed.