We introduce the relation of almost-reduction in an arbitrary topological Ramsey space R as a generalization of the relation of almost-inclusion on N [∞] . This leads us to a type of ultrafilter U ⊆ R which corresponds to the well-known notion of selective ultrafilter on N. The relationship turns out to be rather exact in the sense that it permits us to lift several well-known facts about selective ultrafilters on N and the Ellentuck space N [∞] to the ultrafilter U and the Ramsey space R. For example, we prove that the open coloring axiom holds on L(R) [U], extending therefore the result from [3] which gives the same conclusion for the Ramsey space N [∞] .
PreliminariesWe follow [13] in describing what a topological Ramsey space is, rather than the earlier reference [2], where a slightly different definition is given. Consider triplets of the form (R, ≤, (r n ) n∈N ), where R is a set, ≤ is a pre-order on R, and for every n ∈ N, r n : R −→ AR n is a function with range AR n . If A ≤ B, we say that A is a reduction of B; and for each A ∈ R, we say that r n (A) is the nth approximation of A. We will assume that the following are satisfied: (A1) For any A ∈ R, r 0 (A) = ∅. (A2) For any A, B ∈ R, if A = B, then there exists n such that r n (A) = r n (B). (A3) If r n (A) = r m (B), then n = m and for all i < n, r i (A) = r i (B).These three assumptions allow us to identify each A ∈ R with the sequence (r n (A)) n of its approximations. In this way, if we consider the space AR := n AR n with the discrete topology, we can identify R with a subspace of the (metric) space AR N (with the product topology) of all the sequences of elements of AR. Via this identification, we will regard R as a subspace of AR N , and we will say that R is metrically closed if it is a closed subspace of AR N .Moreover, for a ∈ AR we define the length of a, |a|, as the unique n such that a = r n (A) for some A ∈ R. We will further identify a with the sequence {r i (A)} i≤n . So if a = r n (A) and a = r i (A) for i ≤ n, then we write a = r i (a) (that is, we extend the domain of the function r i to the set of a ∈ AR with i ≤ |a|). In this case, we also write a a and say that a is an initial segment of a. We shall also consider on R the Ellentuck type neighborhoods [a, A] = {B ∈ R : ∃n(a = r n (B)) and B ≤ A}, where a ∈ AR and A ∈ R. If [a, A] = ∅, we will say that a is compatible with A (or A is compatible with a). Let AR(A) = {a ∈ AR : a is compatible with A}. *