Glossary of Topology

Quasicompact: See compact. Some authors define "compact" to include the Hausdorff separation axiom, and they use the term quasicompact to mean what we call in this glossary simply "compact" (without the Hausdorff axiom). This convention is most commonly found in French, and branches of mathematics heavily influenced by the French.

Quotient map: If X and Y are spaces, and if f is a surjection from X to Y, then f is a quotient map (or identification map) if, for every subset U of Y, U is open in Y if and only if f -1(U) is open in X. In other words, Y has the f-strong topology. Equivalently, is a quotient map if and only if it is the transfinite composition of maps, where is a subset. Note that this doesn't imply that f is an open function.

Quotient space: If X is a space, Y is a set, and f : X → Y is any surjective function, then the quotient topology on Y induced by f is the finest topology for which f is continuous. The space X is a quotient space or identification space. By definition, f is a quotient map. The most common example of this is to consider an equivalence relation on X, with Y the set of equivalence classes and f the natural projection map. This construction is dual to the construction of the subspace topology.