Questions tagged [polish-spaces]

A Polish space is a separable completely metrizable topological space; that is, a space homeomorphic to a complete metric space that has a countable dense subset. Polish spaces are so named because they were first extensively studied by Polish topologists and logicians—Sierpiński, Kuratowski, Tarski and others. However, Polish spaces are mostly studied today because they are the primary setting for descriptive set theory, including the study of Borel equivalence relations. Polish spaces are also a convenient setting for more advanced measure theory, in particular in probability theory.

Common examples of Polish spaces are the real line, any separable Banach space, the Cantor space, and the Baire space. Additionally, some spaces that are not complete metric spaces in the usual metric may be Polish; e.g., the open interval $(0, 1)$ is Polish.

Between any two uncountable Polish spaces, there is a Borel isomorphism; that is, a bijection that preserves the Borel structure. In particular, every uncountable Polish space has the cardinality of the continuum.

Lusin spaces, Suslin spaces, and Radon spaces are generalizations of Polish spaces.

There are numerous characterizations that tell when a second-countable topological space is metrizable, such as Urysohn's metrization theorem. The problem of determining whether a metrizable space is completely metrizable is more difficult. Topological spaces such as the open unit interval $(0,1)$ can be given both complete metrics and incomplete metrics generating their topology.

There is a characterization of complete separable metric spaces in terms of a game known as the strong Choquet game. A separable metric space is completely metrizable if and only if the second player has a winning strategy in this game.

A second characterization follows from Alexandrov's theorem. It states that a separable metric space is completely metrizable if and only if it is a $ G_\delta $ subset of its completion in the original metric.