The reflectivity of some categories of T0 spaces in domain theory

Abstract

Keimel and Lawson proposed a set of conditions for proving a category of topological spaces to be reflective in the category of all T0 spaces. These conditions were recently used to prove the reflectivity of the category of all well-filtered spaces. In this paper, we prove that, in certain sense, these conditions are not just sufficient but also necessary for a category of T0 spaces to be reflective. Using this general result, we easily deduce that several categories proposed in domain theory are not reflective, thus answered a few open problems.