Paper 1, Section II, E

Metric and Topological Spaces
Part IB, 2016

Let pp be a prime number. Define what is meant by the pp-adic metric dpd_{p} on Q\mathbb{Q}. Show that for a,b,cQa, b, c \in \mathbb{Q} we have

dp(a,b)max{dp(a,c),dp(c,b)}d_{p}(a, b) \leqslant \max \left\{d_{p}(a, c), d_{p}(c, b)\right\}

Show that the sequence (an)\left(a_{n}\right), where an=1+p++pn1a_{n}=1+p+\cdots+p^{n-1}, converges to some element in (D.

For aQa \in \mathbb{Q} define ap=dp(a,0)|a|_{p}=d_{p}(a, 0). Show that if a,bQa, b \in \mathbb{Q} and if apbp|a|_{p} \neq|b|_{p}, then

a+bp=max{ap,bp}.|a+b|_{p}=\max \left\{|a|_{p},|b|_{p}\right\} .

Let aQa \in \mathbb{Q} and let B(a,δ)B(a, \delta) be the open ball with centre aa and radius δ>0\delta>0, with respect to the metric dpd_{p}. Show that B(a,δ)B(a, \delta) is a closed subset of Q\mathbb{Q} with respect to the topology induced by dpd_{p}.