In mathematics, particularly in the subfields of set theory and topology, a set
is said to be saturated with respect to a function
if
is a subset of
's domain
and if whenever
sends two points
and
to the same value then
belongs to
(that is, if
then
). Said more succinctly, the set
is called saturated if
In topology, a subset of a topological space
is saturated if it is equal to an intersection of open subsets of
In a T1 space every set is saturated.
Let
be a map.
Given any subset
define its image under
to be the set:
and define its preimage or inverse image under
to be the set:
Given
the fiber of
over
is defined to be the preimage:
Any preimage of a single point in
's codomain
is referred to as a fiber of
A set
is called
-saturated and is said to be saturated with respect to
if
is a subset of
's domain
and if any of the following equivalent conditions are satisfied:

- There exists a set
such that
- Any such set
necessarily contains
as a subset and moreover, it will also necessarily satisfy the equality
where
denotes the image of 
- If
and
satisfy
then 
- If
is such that the fiber
intersects
(that is, if
), then this entire fiber is necessarily a subset of
(that is,
).
- For every
the intersection
is equal to the empty set
or to 
Related to computability theory, this notion can be extended to programs. Here, considering a subset
, this can be considered saturated (or extensional) if
. In words, given two programs, if the first program is in the set of programs satisfying the property and two programs are computing the same thing, then also the second program satisfies the property. This means that if one program with a certain property is in the set, all programs computing the same function must also be in the set).
In this context, this notion can extend Rice's theorem, stating that:
Let
be a subset such that
. If
is saturated, then
is not recursive.
Let
be any function. If
is any set then its preimage
under
is necessarily an
-saturated set. In particular, every fiber of a map
is an
-saturated set.
The empty set
and the domain
are always saturated. Arbitrary unions of saturated sets are saturated, as are arbitrary intersections of saturated sets.
Let
and
be any sets and let
be any function.
If
or
is
-saturated then
If
is
-saturated then
where note, in particular, that no requirements or conditions were placed on the set
If
is a topology on
and
is any map then set
of all
that are saturated subsets of
forms a topology on
If
is also a topological space then
is continuous (respectively, a quotient map) if and only if the same is true of