Subbases of a Topology Examples 1
Recall from the Subbases of a Topology page that if $(X, \tau)$ is a topological space then a subset $\mathcal S \subseteq \tau$ is said to be a subbase for the topology $\tau$ if the collection of all finite intersects of sets in $\mathcal S$ forms a base of $\tau$, that is, the following set is a base of $\tau$:
(1)We will now look at some more examples of subbases of topologies.
Example 1
Consider the set $X = \{ a, b, c, d, e, f \}$ with the topology $\tau = \{ \emptyset, \{ a \}, \{ c, d \}, \{a, c, d \}, \{ b, c, d, e, f \}, X \}$. Show that the subset $S = \{ \{ a \}, \{ a, c, d \}, \{ b, c, d, e, f \} \} \subset \tau$ is a subbase of $\tau$.
The collection of all finite intersections of elements from $\mathcal S$ is:
(2)Every set in $\tau$ apart from $X$ is a trivial union of elements in $\mathcal B_S$ and $X = \{ a \} \cup \{ b, c, d, e, f \}$, so $\mathcal B_S$ is a base of $\tau$ so $\mathcal S$ is a subbase of $\tau$.
Example 2
Consider the set $X = \{ a, b, c, d, e \}$ with the topology $\tau = \{ \emptyset, \{ a \}, \{ b \}, \{a, b \}, \{ b, d \}, \{a, b, d \}, \{a, b, c, d \}, X \}$. Show that $\mathcal S = \{ \{ a \}, \{ b \} \{a, b \}, \{ a, b, d \}, \{a, b, c, d \}, X \} \subset \tau$ is not a subbase of $\tau$.
Consider the following set:
(3)The set of all finite intersects of sets from $S$ is:
(4)All sets except $\{ b, d \}$ can be expressed as trivial intersections. However, $\{ b, d \}$ cannot be expressed as a union of elements from $\mathcal B_S$, so $\mathcal B_S$ is not a base of $\tau$ and hence $S$ is not a subbase of $\tau$.