Tychonoff products of compact spaces in ZF and closed ultrafilters

Let {(X_i, T_i): i ∈I } be a family of compact spaces and let X be their Tychonoff product. ??(X) denotes the family of all basic non‐trivial closed subsets of X and ??_R(X) denotes the family of all closed subsets H = V × ΠX_i of X, where V is a non‐trivial closed subset of ΠX_i and Q_H is a finite non‐empty subset of I. We show: (i) Every filterbase ?? ? ??_R(X) extends to a ??_R(X)‐ultrafilter ? if and only if every family H ? ??(X) with the finite intersection property (fip for abbreviation) extends to a maximal ??(X) family F with the fip. (ii) The proposition “if every filterbase ?? ? ??_R(X) extends to a ??_R(X)‐ultrafilter ?, then X is compact” is not provable in ZF. (iii) The statement “for every family {(X_i, T_i): i ∈ I } of compact spaces, every filterbase ?? ? ??_R(Y), Y = Π_{i ∈I}Y_i, extends to a ??_R(Y)‐ultrafilter ?” is equivalent to Tychonoff's compactness theorem. (iv) The statement “for every family {(X_i, T_i): i ∈ ω } of compact spaces, every countable filterbase ?? ? ??_R(X), X = Π_{i ∈ω}X_i, extends to a ??_R(X)‐ultrafilter ?” is equivalent to Tychonoff's compactness theorem restricted to countable families. (v) The countable Axiom of Choice is equivalent to the proposition “for every family {(X_i, T_i): i ∈ ω } of compact topological spaces, every countable family ?? ? ??(X) with the fip extends to a maximal ??(X) family ? with the fip” (© 2010 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)