Componentwise Polish groupoids and equivalence relations

Abstract

We study Borel equivalence relations equipped with a uniformly Borel family of Polish topologies on each equivalence class, and more generally, standard Borel groupoids equipped with such a family of topologies on each connected component. Such "componentwise Polish topologies" capture precisely the topological information determined by the Borel structure of a Polish group action, by the Becker--Kechris theorem. We prove that conversely, every abstract such Borel componentwise Polish groupoid obeying suitable axioms admits a Borel equivalence of groupoids to a global open Polish groupoid. Together with known results, this implies that every such groupoid is Borel equivalent to an action groupoid of a Polish group action; in particular, the induced equivalence relations are Borel bireducible. Our results are also valid for Borel groupoids with componentwise quasi-Polish topologies; and under stronger uniformity assumptions, we show that such groupoids in fact themselves admit global quasi-Polish topologies. As a byproduct, we also generalize several standard tools for Polish groups and their actions to the setting of componentwise quasi-Polish groupoids, including Vaught transforms, Effros's theorem on orbits, and the open mapping theorem.