A neighbourhood basis or local basis for a point x is a filter base of the neighbourhood filter, i.e. a subset
That is, for any neighbourhood we can find a neighbourhood in the neighbourhood basis that is contained in .
Conversely, as with any filter base, the local basis allows to get back the corresponding neighbourhood filter as .
- Trivially the neighbourhood system for a point is also a neighbourhood basis for the point.
- Given a space X with the indiscrete topology the neighbourhood system for any point x only contains the whole space,
- In a metric space, for any point x, the sequence of open balls around x with radius 1/n form a countable neighbourhood basis . This means every metric space is first-countable.
- In the weak topology on the space of measures on a space E, a neighbourhood base about is given by
- where are continuous bounded functions from E to the real numbers.
This is because, by assumption, vector addition is separate continuous in the induced topology. Therefore the topology is determined by its neighbourhood system at the origin. More generally, this remains true whenever the topology is defined by a translation invariant metric or pseudometric.
- Stephen Willard, General Topology (1970) Addison-Wesley Publishing (See Chapter 2, Section 4)