Any open subset of $\Bbb R$ is a countable union of disjoint open intervals

Question

Let $U$ be an open set in $\mathbb R$. Then $U$ is a countable union of disjoint intervals.

This question has probably been asked. However, I am not interested in just getting the answer to it. Rather, I am interested in collecting as many different proofs of it which are as diverse as possible. A professor told me that there are many. So, I invite everyone who has seen proofs of this fact to share them with the community. I think it is a result worth knowing how to prove in many different ways and having a post that combines as many of them as possible will, no doubt, be quite useful. After two days, I will place a bounty on this question to attract as many people as possible. Of course, any comments, corrections, suggestions, links to papers/notes etc. are more than welcome.

Answer 1

Here’s one to get things started.

Let $U$ be a non-empty open subset of $\Bbb R$. For $x,y\in U$ define $x\sim y$ iff $\big[\min\{x,y\},\max\{x,y\}\big]\subseteq U$. It’s easily checked that $\sim$ is an equivalence relation on $U$ whose equivalence classes are pairwise disjoint open intervals in $\Bbb R$. (The term interval here includes unbounded intervals, i.e., rays.) Let $\mathscr{I}$ be the set of $\sim$-classes. Clearly $U=\bigcup_{I \in \mathscr{I}} I$. For each $I\in\mathscr{I}$ choose a rational $q_I\in I$; the map $\mathscr{I}\to\Bbb Q:I\mapsto q_I$ is injective, so $\mathscr{I}$ is countable.

A variant of the same basic idea is to let $\mathscr{I}$ be the set of open intervals that are subsets of $U$. For $I,J\in\mathscr{I}$ define $I\sim J$ iff there are $I_0=I,I_1,\dots,I_n=J\in\mathscr{I}$ such that $I_k\cap I_{k+1}\ne\varnothing$ for $k=0,\dots,n-1$. Then $\sim$ is an equivalence relation on $\mathscr{I}$. For $I\in\mathscr{I}$ let $[I]$ be the $\sim$-class of $I$. Then $\left\{\bigcup[I]:I\in\mathscr{I}\right\}$ is a decomposition of $U$ into pairwise disjoint open intervals.

Both of these arguments generalize to any LOTS (= Linearly Ordered Topological Space), i.e., any linearly ordered set $\langle X,\le\rangle$ with the topology generated by the subbase of open rays $(\leftarrow,x)$ and $(x,\to)$: if $U$ is a non-empty open subset of $X$, then $U$ is the union of a family of pairwise disjoint open order-convex sets. (A set $C\subseteq X$ is order-convex if whenever $u,v\in C$ and $u<x<v$, then $x\in C$. Intervals and rays are always order-convex, and the converse is true if the order is complete.) It does take a little work to verify that these sets are open.

Alternatively, $U$ is the union of a family of pairwise disjoint intervals, where the intervals are allowed to have endpoints in the completion of the linear order.

In general the family need not be countable, of course.

Answer 2

A variant of the usual proof with the equivalence relation, which trades in the ease of constructing the intervals with the ease of proving countability (not that either is hard...):

1. Define the same equivalence relation, but only on $\mathbb Q \cap U$: $q_1 \sim q_2$ iff $(q_1, q_2) \subset U$ (or $(q_2, q_1) \subset U$, whichever makes sense).
2. From each equivalency class $C$, produce the open interval $(\inf C, \sup C) \subset U$ (where $\inf C$ is defined to be $-\infty$ in case $C$ is not bounded from below, and $\sup C = \infty$ in case $C$ is not bounded from above).
3. The amount of equivalence classes is clearly countable, since $\mathbb Q \cap U$ is countable.

Answer 3

In a locally connected space $X$, all connected components of open sets are open. This is in fact equivalent to being locally connected.

Proof: (one direction) let $O$ be an open subset of a locally connected space $X$. Let $C$ be a component of $O$ (as a (sub)space in its own right). Let $x \in C$. Then let $U_x$ be a connected neighbourhood of $x$ in $X$ such that $U_x \subset O$, which can be done as $O$ is open and the connected neighbourhoods form a local base. Then $U_x,C \subset O$ are both connected and intersect (in $x$) so their union $U_x \cup C \subset O$ is a connected subset of $O$ containing $x$, so by maximality of components $U_x \cup C \subset C$. But then $U_x$ witnesses that $x$ is an interior point of $C$, and this shows all points of $C$ are interior points, hence $C$ is open (in either $X$ or $O$, that's equivalent).

Now $\mathbb{R}$ is locally connected (open intervals form a local base of connected sets) and so every open set if a disjoint union of its components, which are open connected subsets of $\mathbb{R}$, hence are open intervals (potentially of infinite "length", i.e. segments). That there are countably many of them at most, follows from the already given "rational in every interval" argument.

Answer 4

Let $U\subseteq\mathbb R$ open. It is enough to write $U$ as a disjoint union of open intervals.
For each $x\in U$, we define $\alpha_x=\inf\{\alpha\in\mathbb R:(\alpha,x+\epsilon)\subseteq U, \text{ for some }\epsilon>0\}$ and $\beta_x=\sup\{\beta\in\mathbb R:(\alpha_x,\beta)\subseteq U\}$.

Then $\displaystyle U=\bigcup_{x\in U}(\alpha_x,\beta_x)$ where $\{(\alpha_x,\beta_x):x\in U\}$ is a disjoint family of open intervals.

The intervals appearing in the union are disjoint in the sense that every time $x,y\in U$ with $x<y$, then either $(\alpha_x,\beta_x)=(\alpha_y,\beta_y)$ holds, or $(\alpha_x,\beta_x)\cap(\alpha_y,\beta_y)$ is empty. To see this, suppose $(\alpha_x,\beta_x)\cap(\alpha_y,\beta_y)$ has an element. We claim that $[x,y]\subseteq U$. (For if $x<t<y$ with $t\not\in U$, then $\beta_x\leq t\leq \alpha_y$.)

But if $[x,y]\subseteq U$, then both $\alpha_x<x$ and $\alpha_y<x$, and both $y<\beta_x$ and $y<\beta_y$. Hence $\alpha_x$ and $\alpha_y$ can be expressed as $$\alpha_x=\inf\{\alpha\leq x:(\alpha,x+\epsilon)\subseteq U, \text{ for some }\epsilon>0\},$$ $$\alpha_y=\inf\{\overline\alpha\leq x:(\overline\alpha,y+\overline\epsilon)\subseteq U, \text{ for some }\overline\epsilon>0\},$$ and these are the same; so then also $\beta_x$ and $\beta_y$ are the same.

Answer 5

Let $U$ be an open subset of $\mathbb{R}$. Let $P$ be the poset consisting of collections $\mathcal{A}$ of disjoint open intervals where we say $\mathcal{A} \le \mathcal{A}'$ if each of the sets in $\mathcal{A}$ is a subset of some open interval in $\mathcal{A}'$. Every chain $C$ in this poset has an upper bound, namely $$\mathcal{B} = \left\{ \bigcup\left\{J \in \bigcup\bigcup C : I \subseteq J \right\}: I \in \bigcup\bigcup C\right\}.$$ Therefore by Zorn's lemma the poset $P$ has a maximal element $\mathcal{M}$. We claim that the union of the intervals in $\mathcal{M}$ is all of $U$. Suppose toward a contradiction that there is a real $x \in U$ that is not contained in any of the intervals in $\mathcal{M}$. Because $U$ is open we can take an open interval $I$ with $x \in I \subseteq U$. Then the set $$\mathcal{M}' = \{J \in \mathcal{M} : J \cap I = \emptyset\} \cup \left\{I \cup \bigcup \{J \in \mathcal{M} : J \cap I \ne \emptyset\}\right\}$$ is a collection of disjoint open intervals and is above $\mathcal{M}$ in the poset $P$, contradicting the maximality of $\mathcal{M}$. It remains to observe that $\mathcal{M}$ is countable, which follows from the fact that its elements contain distinct rational numbers.

Note that the only way in which anything about order (or connectedness) is used is to see that $I \cup \bigcup \{J \in \mathcal{M} : J \cap I \ne \emptyset\}$ is an interval.