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However, the definition of maximal and minimal elements is more general. In particular, a set can have many maximal and minimal elements, whereas infima and suprema are unique. Whereas maxima and minima must be members of the subset that is under consideration, the infimum and supremum of a subset need not be members of that subset themselves.
Hence, it is the supremum of the limit points. The infimum/inferior/inner limit is a set where all of these accumulation sets meet. That is, it is the intersection of all of the accumulation sets. When ordering by set inclusion, the infimum limit is the greatest lower bound on the set of accumulation points because it is contained in each of ...
This concept is also called supremum or join, and for a set S one writes sup(S) or for its least upper bound. Conversely, the greatest lower bound is known as infimum or meet and denoted inf(S) or . These concepts play an important role in many applications of order theory.
The supremum of B is then equal to the infimum of X: since each element of X is an upper bound of B, sup B is smaller than all elements of X, i.e. sup B is in B. It is the greatest element of B and hence the infimum of X. In a dual way, the existence of all infima implies the existence of all suprema.
Then f preserves the supremum of S if the set f(S) = {f(x) | x in S} has a least upper bound in Q which is equal to f(s), i.e. f(sup S) = sup f(S) This definition consists of two requirements: the supremum of the set f(S) exists and it is equal to f(s). This corresponds to the abovementioned parallel to category theory, but is not always ...
In the extended real numbers every set has a supremum (resp. infimum) which of course may be (resp. ) if the set is unbounded. An important use of the extended reals is that any set of non negative numbers a i ≥ 0 , i ∈ I {\displaystyle a_{i}\geq 0,i\in I} has a well defined summation order independent sum
Exactly in the same way one defines the essential infimum as the supremum of the essential lower bound s, that is, = {: ({: <}) =} if the set of essential lower bounds is nonempty, and as otherwise; again there is an alternative expression as = {: ()} (with this being if the set is empty).
The axiom is equivalent to the existence of the infimum and supremum (proof below), the convergence of Cauchy sequences and the Bolzano–Weierstrass theorem. This means that one of the four has to be introduced axiomatically, while the other three can be successively proven.