Metric Spaces – Are Continuous Images of Open Sets Borel?

descriptive-set-theorymetric-spaces

Consider a Polish space $(X,d)$ and any metric space $(Y,e)$. If we have a continuous surjection $f:X\to Y$ then is the image $f(U)$ of any open subset $U\subset X$ a Borel set in $Y$?

I know that this is true if we allow $X$ to be compact, since every open subset of a metric space is $F_{\sigma}$ and closed subsets of a compact metric space are compact, and moreover continuous images of compact sets are compact. So in this case, the image of an open set would be $F_{\sigma}$ in $Y$.

If this is not the case for the given $f$, would it do any difference if we allowed $Y$ to be in addition Polish? Or compact? Or should $f$ have more properties? How about $X$? Or is this all just a triviality that I have overlooked?

Thanks for all the input in advance.

Best Answer

The answer is no. Endow both $\mathbb{R}^2$ and $\mathbb{R}$ with the usual Borel $\sigma$-algebra and let $\pi_1:\mathbb{R}^2\to\mathbb{R}$ be the projection onto the first coordinate. Now it is a well known fact that there exists Borel sets $B\subseteq\mathbb{R}^2$ such that $\pi_1(B)$ is not Borel. Now $B$ will be in general not open, but we can make it so. We just apply the following theorem (Lemma 4.58 in Alipranits & Border 2006):

Let $\mathcal{C}$ be a countable family of Borel subsets of a Polish space $(X, \tau)$. Then there is a Polish topology $\tau'\supseteq\tau$ on $X$ with the same Borel $\sigma$-algebra for which each set in $\mathcal{C}$ is both open and closed.

In particular, we can make $B$ open. Then $B$ is open and $\pi_1$ is a continuous surjection, but $\pi_1(B)$ not Borel. Since one can take $B$ in the original space to be bounded, the example works even when $Y$ is compact.