On the largest regular subring of <i>C(X)</i>

Abstract

We call a real-valued function f on a topological space X a locally constant if each point x ∈ X has a neighborhood on which f is constant.  The set of all locally constant functions f : X → R is denoted by E(X). We observe that E(X) is the largest von Neumann regular subring of  C(X) containing R. We show that for every space X, there is a zero-dimensional space Y such that E(X) ∼= E(Y ) and E(X) determines the  topology of X if and only if X is a zero-dimensional space. By an example, it turns out that E(X) is not always of the form C(Y ) for some  space Y , but whenever X is a locally connected space, we observe that E(X) is a C(Y ), where Y is a discrete space. Finally some von  Neumann local subrings of C(X) containing R are introduced and topological spaces X are characterized for which these subrings coincide  with the smallest one. Note that a ring R is said to be a von Neumann local ring if for each a ∈ R either a or 1 − a has von  Neumann inverse.