Path-connectedness and topological closure of some sets related to the non-compact Stiefel manifold

Abstract: If $H$ is a Hilbert space, the non-compact Stiefel manifold $St(n,H)$ consists of independent $n$-tuples in $H$. In this article, we contribute to the topological study of non-compact Stiefel manifolds, mainly by proving two results on the path-connectedness and topological closure of some sets related to the non-compact Stiefel manifold. In the first part, after introducing and proving an essential lemma, we prove that $\bigcap_{j \in J} \left( U(j) + St(n,H) \right)$ is path-connected by polygonal paths under a condition on the codimension of the span of the components of the translating $J$-family. Then, in the second part, we show that the topological closure of $St(n,H) \cap S$ contains all polynomial paths contained in $S$ and passing through a point in $St(n,H)$. As a consequence, we prove that $St(n,H)$ is relatively dense in a certain class of subsets which we illustrate with many examples from frame theory coming from the study of the solutions of some linear and quadratic equations which are finite-dimensional continuous frames. Since $St(n,L^2(X,\mu;\mathbb{F}))$ is isometric to $\mathcal{F}_{(X,\Sigma,\mu),n}^\mathbb{F}$, this article is also a contribution to the theory of finite-dimensional continuous Hilbert space frames.