A number of spectrum constructions have been devised to extract topological spaces from algebraic data. Prominent examples include the Zariski spectrum of a commutative ring, the Stone spectrum of a bounded distributive lattice, the Gelfand spectrum of a commutative unital C*-algebra and the Hofmann–Lawson spectrum of a continuous frame.

Inspired by the examples above, we define a spectrum for localic semirings. We use arguments in the symmetric monoidal category of suplattices to prove that, under conditions satisfied by the aforementioned examples, the spectrum can be constructed as the frame of overt weakly closed radical ideals and that it reduces to the usual constructions in those cases. Our proofs are constructive.

Our approach actually gives ‘quantalic’ spectrum from which the more familiar localic spectrum can then be derived. For a discrete ring this yields the quantale of ideals and in general should contain additional ‘differential’ information about the semiring.

To each filter ℱ on ω, a certain linear subalgebra A(ℱ) of Rω, the countable product of lines, is assigned. This algebra is shown to have many interesting topological properties, depending on the properties of the filter ℱ. For example, if ℱ is a free ultrafilter, then A(ℱ) is a Baire subalgebra of ℱω for which the game OF introduced by Tkachenko is undetermined (this resolves a problem of Hernández, Robbie and Tkachenko); and if ℱ1 and ℱ2 are two free filters on ω that are not near coherent (such filters exist under Martin's Axiom), then A (ℱ1) and A(ℱ2) are two o-bounded and OF-undetermined subalgebras of ℱω whose product A(ℱ1) × A(ℱ2) is OF-determined and not o-bounded (this resolves a problem of Tkachenko). It is also shown that the statement that the product of two o-bounded subrings of ℱω is o-bounded is equivalent to the set-theoretic principle NCF (Near Coherence of Filters); this suggests that Tkachenko's question on the productivity of the class of o-bounded topological groups may be undecidable in ZFC.

Let λ be a map from the additive Euclidean n-group Rn into the space R of real numbers and define a multiplication * on Rn by v * w = (λ(w))v. Then (Rn, + , *) is a topological nearring if and only if λ is continuous and λ(av) = aλ(v) for every v € Rn and every a in the range of λ. For any such map λ and any topological space X we denote by Nλ(X, Rn) the nearring of all continuous functions from X into (Rn, +, *) where the operations are pointwise. The ideals of Nλ(X, Rn) are investigated in some detail for certain λ and the results obtained are used to prove that two compact Hausdorff spaces X and Y are homeomorphic if and only if the nearrings Nλ(X, Rn) and Nλ(Y, Rn) are isomorphic.