An Expansion of the Continuity Property

Abstract

One of the advantages of working with Alexander-Spanier-\v{C}ech type cohomology theory is the continuity property: For inverse systems of sufficiently well-behaved spaces, the result of taking the cohomology of their limit is a direct limit of their cohomologies. However, \v{C}ech cohomology natively works with presheaves of modules rather than modules themselves. We define the notion of a system of presheaves for an inverse system of topological spaces, and show that, under the same circumstances as the ordinary continuity property, a suitable limit of the system provides the \v{C}ech cohomology of the inverse limit of the spaces. We then show one application of this result in comparing the cohomology of an inverse limit of finite groups to that of the inverse limit of their classifying spaces.