# nLab Richman premetric space

Contents

This entry is about the family of binary relations indexed by the non-negative rational numbers defined by Fred Richman in Real numbers and other completions, see Richman premetric space. For the family of binary relations indexed by the positive rational numbers defined by Auke Booij in Analysis in univalent type theory.

# Contents

## Idea

A more general concept of metric space by Fred Richman. While Fred Richman simply called these structures “premetric spaces”, there are multiple notions of premetric spaces in the mathematical literature, so we shall refer to these as Richman premetric spaces.

## Definition

A Richman premetric space is a set $S$ with a ternary relation $(-)\sim_{(-)}(-)\colon S \times \mathbb{Q}_{\geq 0} \times S \to \Omega$, where $\mathbb{Q}_{\geq 0}$ represent the non-negative rational numbers in $\mathbb{Q}$ and $\Omega$ is the set of truth values, such that

• for all $x \in S$ and $y \in S$, $(x = y) \iff (x \sim_0 y)$

• for all $x \in S$ and $y \in S$, there exists $q \in \mathbb{Q}_{\geq 0}$ such that $x \sim_q y$

• for all $x \in S$, $y \in S$, $q \in \mathbb{Q}_{\geq 0}$, and $r \in (q, \infty)$, where $(q, \infty)$ is the set of all non-negative rational numbers strictly greater than $q$, then $(x \sim_r y) \iff (x \sim_q y)$

• for all $x \in S$, $y \in S$, $z \in S$, $q \in \mathbb{Q}_{\geq 0}$, and $r \in \mathbb{Q}_{\geq 0}$, if $x \sim_q y$ and $y \sim_r z$, then $x \sim_{q + r} z$.

## Properties

Assuming excluded middle, every Richman premetric space is a metric space. Without excluded middle, however, every Richman premetric space is a “metric space” which is valued in the lower Dedekind real numbers, rather than the two-sided Dedekind real numbers.

## References

Created on May 31, 2022 at 13:40:27. See the history of this page for a list of all contributions to it.