Order Embeddings with Irrational Codomain: Debreu Properties of Real Subsets

The objective of this paper is to investigate the role of the set of irrational numbers as the codomain of order-preserving functions defined on topological totally preordered sets. We will show that although the set of irrational numbers does not satisfy the Debreu property it is still nonetheless true that any lower (respectively, upper) semicontinuous total preorder representable by a real-valued strictly isotone function (semicontinuous or not) also admits a representation by means of a lower (respectively, upper) semicontinuous strictly isotone function that takes values in the set of irrational numbers. These results are obtained by means of a direct construction. Moreover, they can be related to Cantor’s characterization of the real line to obtain much more general results on the semicontinuous Debreu properties of a wide family of subsets of the real line.