In mathematics, in the field of topology, a topological space is called supercompact if there is a subbasis such that every open cover of the topological space from elements of the subbasis has a subcover with at most two subbasis elements. Supercompactness and the related notion of superextension was introduced by J. de Groot in 1967.[1]
By the Alexander subbase theorem, every supercompact space is compact. Conversely, many (but not all) compact spaces are supercompact. The following are examples of supercompact spaces:
Some compact Hausdorff spaces are not supercompact; such an example is given by the Stone–Čech compactification of the natural numbers (with the discrete topology).[4]
A continuous image of a supercompact space need not be supercompact.[5]
In a supercompact space (or any continuous image of one), the cluster point of any countable subset is the limit of a nontrivial convergent sequence.[6]