Directed sets and topological spaces definable in o-minimal structures

We study directed sets definable in o-minimal structures, showing that in expansions of ordered fields these admit cofinal definable curves, as well as a suitable analogue in expansions of ordered groups, and furthermore that no analogue holds in full generality. We use the theory of tame pairs to extend the results in the field case to definable families of sets with the finite intersection property. We then apply our results to the study of definable topologies. We prove that all definable topological spaces display properties akin to first countability, and give several characterizations of a notion of definable compactness due to Peterzil and Steinhorn (J. Lond. Math. Soc. (2) 59 (1999) 769-786) generalized to this setting.