Soft Open Bases and a Novel Construction of Soft Topologies from Bases for Topologies

Soft topology studies a structure on the collection of all soft sets on a given set of alternatives (the relevant attributes being fixed). It is directly inspired by the axioms of a topological space. This paper contributes to the theoretical bases of soft topology in various ways. We extend a general construction of soft topologies from topologies on the set of alternatives in two different directions. An extensive discussion with criteria about what a soft counterpart of topological separability should satisfy is also given. The interactions of the properties that arise with separability, and of second-countability and its soft counterpart, are studied under the general mechanisms that generate soft topological spaces. The first non-trivial examples of soft second-countable soft topological spaces are produced as a consequence.