In mathematics, a filter on a set is a collection of nonempty subsets which is closed under taking supersets and finite intersections. An example of a filter is the collection of neighborhoods of a point in a topological space.
Filters were introduced by Henri Cartan in 1937 in the context of general topological spaces and were subsequently developed by Nicolas Bourbaki in their book Topologie Générale (first edition in 1940) as an alternative to the related notion of a net developed in 1922 by E. H. Moore and Herman L. Smith. They later found applications in many fields outside of topology, including set theory, mathematical logic, model theory (ultraproducts for example), abstract algebra, and others.
Filters on a set were later generalized to order filters. Specifically, a filter on a set is an order filter on the power set of ordered by inclusion.
The notion dual to a filter is an ideal. Ultrafilters are a particularly important subclass of filters.
Given a set , a filter on is a set of subsets of such that:
A proper (or non-degenerate) filter is a filter which is proper as a subset of the powerset (i.e., the only improper filter is , consisting of all possible subsets). By upwards-closure, a filter is proper if and only if it does not contain the empty set. Many authors adopt the convention that a filter must be proper by definition.
When and are two filters on the same set such that holds, is said to be coarser than (or a subfilter of ) while is said to be finer than (or subordinate to or a superfilter of ).
The kernel of a filter on is the intersection of all the subsets of in .
A filter on is principal (or atomic) when it has a particularly simple form: it contains exactly the supersets of , for some fixed subset . When , this yields the improper filter. When is a singleton, this filter (which consists of all subsets that contain ) is called the fundamental filter (or discrete filter) associated with .
A filter is principal if and only if the kernel of is an element of , and when this is the case, consists of the supersets of its kernel. On a finite set, every filter is principal (since the intersection defining the kernel is finite).
A filter is said to be free when it has empty kernel, otherwise it is fixed (and if is an element of the kernel, it is fixed by ). A filter on a set is free if and only if it contains the Fréchet filter on .
Two filters and on mesh when every member of intersects every member of . For every filter on , there exists a unique pair of filters (the free part of ) and (the principal part of ) on such that is free, is principal, , and does not mesh with . The principal part is the principal filter generated by the kernel of , and the free part consists of elements of with any number of elements from the kernel possibly removed.
A filter is countably deep if the kernel of any countable subset of belongs to .
The concept of a filter on a set is a special case of the more general concept of a filter on a partially ordered set. By definition, a filter on a partially ordered set is a subset of which is upwards-closed (if and then ) and downwards-directed (every finite subset of has a lower bound in ). A filter on a set is the same as a filter on the powerset ordered by inclusion.
If is a family of filters on , its intersection is a filter on . The intersection is a greatest lower bound operation in the set of filters on partially ordered by inclusion, which endows the filters on with a complete lattice structure.
The intersection consists of the subsets which can be written as where for each .
Given a family of subsets , there exists a minimum filter on (in the sense of inclusion) which contains . It can be constructed as the intersection (greatest lower bound) of all filters on containing . This filter is called the filter generated by , and is said to be a filter subbase of .
The generated filter can also be described more explicitly: is obtained by closing under finite intersections, then upwards, i.e., consists of the subsets such that for some .
Since these operations preserve the kernel, it follows that is a proper filter if and only if has the finite intersection property: the intersection of a finite subfamily of is non-empty.
In the complete lattice of filters on ordered by inclusion, the least upper bound of a family of filters is the filter generated by .
Two filters and on mesh if and only if is proper.
Let be a filter on . A filter base of is a family of subsets such that is the upwards closure of , i.e., consists of those subsets for which for some .
This upwards closure is a filter if and only if is downwards-directed, i.e., is non-empty and for all there exists such that . When this is the case, is also called a prefilter, and the upwards closure is also equal to the generated filter . Hence, being a filter base of is a stronger property than being a filter subbase of .
If is a filter on and , the trace of on is , which is a filter.
Let be a function.
When is a family of subsets of , its image by is defined as
The image filter by of a filter on is defined as the generated filter . If is surjective, then is already a filter. In the general case, is a filter base and hence is its upwards closure. Furthermore, if is a filter base of then is a filter base of .
The kernels of and are linked by .
Given a family of sets and a filter on each , the product filter on the product set is defined as the filter generated by the sets for and , where is the projection from the product set onto the -th component. This construction is similar to the product topology.
If each is a filter base on , a filter base of is given by the sets where is a family such that for all and for all but finitely many .
| Families of sets over | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Is necessarily true of or, is closed under: | Directed by | F.I.P. | ||||||||
| π-system | ||||||||||
| Semiring | Never | |||||||||
| Semialgebra (semifield) | Never | |||||||||
| Monotone class | only if | only if | ||||||||
| 𝜆-system (Dynkin system) | only if | only if or they are disjoint | Never | |||||||
| Ring (order theory) | ||||||||||
| Ring (measure theory) | Never | |||||||||
| δ-ring | Never | |||||||||
| 𝜎-ring | Never | |||||||||
| Algebra (field) | Never | |||||||||
| 𝜎-algebra (𝜎-field) | Never | |||||||||
| Filter | ||||||||||
| Proper filter | Never | Never | Never | |||||||
| Prefilter (filter base) | ||||||||||
| Filter subbase | ||||||||||
| Open topology | (even arbitrary ) | Never | ||||||||
| Closed topology | (even arbitrary ) | Never | ||||||||
| Is necessarily true of or, is closed under: | directed downward | finite intersections | finite unions | relative complements | complements in | countable intersections | countable unions | contains | contains | Finite intersection property |
|
Additionally, a semiring is a π-system where every complement is equal to a finite disjoint union of sets in | ||||||||||