English

On non-Hausdorff manifolds

General Topology 2026-03-26 v5

Abstract

In this long note, we investigate various purely topological aspects of non-Hausdorff manifolds (NH-manifolds for short). Our emphasis is on manifolds which exhibit homogeneity or weakenings thereof, in particular being everywhere non-Hausdorff. Homogeneous NH-manifolds and everywhere non-Hausdorff manifolds are respectively called HNH- and ENH-manifolds. We write NHX(x)NH_X(x) for the subset of points of a space XX which cannot be separated of xx by open sets. The topics covered in this note are the following. -- General (basic) properties of manifolds and their quasi-compact or quasi-countably compact subspaces. -- Covering properties implying the Hausdorffness of (weakly) homogeneous manifolds. -- (Non-)existence of hereditarily separable ENH-manifolds (under set theoretic hypotheses). -- Non-existence of a quasi-countably compact ENH-manifold. -- Properties of NH-manifolds which imply that NHM(x)NH_M(x) is discrete, or at least ``simple''. -- Constructions of HNH-manifolds such that NH(x)NH(x) is non-homogeneous, for instance a countable union of closed intervals and nn-torii. -- Constructions of NH-manifolds MM with a point xx such that NHM(x)NH_M(x) is homeomorphic to various ``complicated'' spaces, in particular in dimension 11 and 22. We use elementary (or at least well known) methods of general or set theoretic topology, with a little bit of conformal theory and dynamical systems (flows) in some constructions. Many pictures are given to illustrate the constructions, and the proofs are rather detailed, which is the main reason for the length of this note.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2502.17707,
  title  = {On non-Hausdorff manifolds},
  author = {Mathieu Baillif},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2502.17707},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

Work in progress whose contents might change over time. Some pictures use colors and can be difficult to decipher for color blind readers. V5: See the list of main changes on first page

R2 v1 2026-06-28T21:56:30.791Z