Finite linear coverings of locally connected continua

A concept of finite coverings of continua with a linear order of their members is given. A characterization is obtained of hereditarily locally connected continua which have a finite supremum of cardinalities of the considered coverings.     

The surjective semispan for Hausdorff continua

It is well known that Tychonoff spaces are those whose topology is induced by a uniformity. We use this fact to give two characterizations of chainable continua; the first one in terms of V-chains and the other one in terms of V-maps. We also define the surjective semispan for Hausdorff continua and we prove that chainable continua has empty surjective semispan. As a consequence of this result we obtain that each map from a continuum onto a chainable continuum is universal; in particular, chainable continua have the fixed point property.     

Simply connected homogeneous continua are not separated by arcs

We show that locally connected,simply connected homogeneous continua are not separated by arcs. We ask several questions about homogeneous continua which are inspired by analogous questions in geometric group theory.     

Various types of local connectedness in n-fold hyperspaces

Let X be a continuum. The n-fold hyperspace Cn(X), n<∞, is the space of all nonempty compact subsets of X with the Hausdorff metric. Four types of local connectivity at points of Cn(X) are investigated: connected im kleinen, locally connected, arcwise connected im kleinen and locally arcwise connected. Characterizations, as well as necessary or sufficient conditions, are obtained for Cn(X) to have one or another of the local connectivity properties at a given point. Several results involve the property of Kelley or C^*-smoothness. Some new results are obtained for C(X), the space of subcontinua of X. A class of continua X is given for which Cn(X) is connected im kleinen only at subcontinua of X and for which any two such subcontinua must intersect.     

Countable connected Hausdorff and Urysohn bunches of arcs in the plane

In this paper, we answer a question by Krasinkiewicz, Reńska and Sobolewski by constructing countable connected Hausdorff and Urysohn spaces as quotient spaces of bunches of arcs in the plane. We also consider a generalization of graphs by allowing vertices to be continua and replacing edges by not necessarily connected sets. We require only that two “vertices” be in the same quasi-component of the “edge” that contains them. We observe that if a graph G cannot be embedded in the plane, then any generalized graph modeled on G is not embeddable in the plane. As a corollary we obtain not planar bunches of arcs with their natural quotients Hausdorff or Urysohn. This answers another question by Krasinkiewicz, Reńska and Sobolewski.     

Filament sets and homogeneous continua

New tools are introduced for the study of homogeneous continua. The subcontinua of a given continuum are classified into three types: filament, non-filament, and ample, with ample being a subcategory of non-filament. The richness of the collection of ample subcontinua of a homogeneous continuum reflects where the space lies in the gradation from being locally connected at one extreme to indecomposable at another. Applications are given to the general theory of homogeneous continua and their hyperspaces.     

Local connectivity functions on arcwise connected spaces and certain continua

Types of spaces are given on which every local connectivity function is a connectivity function, a connected function, or a Darboux function. A complete determination such spaces is obtained when the spaces are assumed to be arc-like continua or circle-like continua. Results provide answers to a question asked by Stallings.     

Brush spaces and the fixed point property

We introduce the notions of a brush space and a weak brush space. Each of these spaces has a compact connected core with attached connected fibers and may be either compact or non-compact. Many spaces, both in the Hausdorff non-metrizable setting and in the metric setting, have realizations as (weak) brush spaces. We show that these spaces have the fixed point property if and only if subspaces with core and finitely many fibers have the fixed point property. This result generalizes the fixed point result for generalized Alexandroff/Urysohn Squares in Hagopian and Marsh (2010) [4]. We also look at some familiar examples, with and without the fixed point property, from Bing (1969) [1], Connell (1959) [3], Knill (1967) [7] and note the brush space structures related to these examples.     

Compact spaces generated by retractions

We study compact spaces which are obtained from metric compacta by iterating the operation of inverse limit of continuous sequences of retractions. This class, denoted by R, has been introduced in [M. Burke, W. Kubi?, S. Todor?evi?, Kadec norms on spaces of continuous functions, http://arxiv.org/abs/math.FA/0312013]. Allowing continuous images in the definition of class R, one obtains a strictly larger class, which we denote by RC. We show that every space in class RC is either Corson compact or else contains a copy of the ordinal segment ω₁+1. This improves a result of Kalenda from [O. Kalenda, Embedding of the ordinal segment [0,ω₁] into continuous images of Valdivia compacta, Comment. Math. Univ. Carolin. 40 (4) (1999) 777-783], where the same was proved for the class of continuous images of Valdivia compacta. We prove that spaces in class R do not contain cutting P-points (see the definition below), which provides a tool for finding spaces in RC?R. Finally, we study linearly ordered spaces in class RC. We prove that scattered linearly ordered compacta belong to RC and we characterize those ones which belong to R. We show that there are only 5 types (up to order isomorphism) of connected linearly ordered spaces in class R and all of them are Valdivia compact. Finally, we find a universal pre-image for the class of all linearly ordered Valdivia compacta.     

Whitney preserving maps on finite graphs

For a Whitney preserving map f:X→G we show the following: (a) If X is arcwise connected and G is a graph which is not a simple closed curve, then f is a homeomorphism; (b) If X is locally connected and G is a simple closed curve, then X is homeomorphic to either the unit interval [0,1], or the unit circle S¹. As a consequence of these results, we characterize all Whitney preserving maps between finite graphs. We also show that every hereditarily weakly confluent Whitney preserving map between locally connected continua is a homeomorphism.     

Remainders of arcwise connected compactifications of the plane

A. Lelek asked which continua are remainders of locally connected compactifications of the plane. In this paper we study a similar problem with local connectedness replaced by arcwise connectedness. (Each locally connected continuum is arcwise connected.) We give the following characterization: a continuum X is pointed 1-movable if and only if there is an arcwise connected compactification of the plane with X as the remainder.     

Pseudo-path connected homogeneous continua

The main result of this paper states that every homogeneous pseudo-path connected continuum is weakly chainable, or equivalently, every homogeneous continuum connected by continuous images of the pseudo-arc is itself a continuous image of the pseudo-arc. We notice that even though there exist homogeneous path connected continua that are not continuous images of an arc (Prajs, 2002), they all are continuous images of the pseudo-arc.     

Disk-like products of continua

In 1975 Hagopian proved that continua X and Y are atriodic and hereditarily unicoherent when the product X×Y is disk-like. In this paper, under the same condition, we prove that X and Y are contractible with respect to every ANR and X and Y are tree-like continua in ClassHW.     

Small Valdivia compact spaces

We prove a preservation theorem for the class of Valdivia compact spaces, which involves inverse sequences of retractions of a certain kind. Consequently, a compact space of weight?ℵ₁ is Valdivia compact iff it is the limit of an inverse sequence of metric compacta whose bonding maps are retractions. As a corollary, we show that the class of Valdivia compacta of weight?ℵ₁ is preserved both under retractions and under open 0-dimensional images. Finally, we characterize the class of all Valdivia compacta in the language of category theory, which implies that this class is preserved under all continuous weight preserving functors.     

Observations on quasi-uniform products

We prove that any product of quotient maps in the category of quasi-uniform spaces and quasi-uniformly continuous maps is a quotient map. We also show that a quasi-uniformly continuous map from a product of quasi-uniform spaces into a quasi-pseudometric T₀-space depends on countably many coordinates.Furthermore we characterize those quasi-uniformities that are unique in their quasi-proximity class and prove that this property is preserved under arbitrary products in the category of quasi-uniform spaces.     

Strongly countable dimensional compacta form the Hurewicz set

The hyperspaces of strongly countable dimensional compacta of positive dimension and of strongly countable dimensional continua of dimension greater than 1 in the Hilbert cube are homeomorphic to the Hurewicz set of all nonempty countable closed subsets of the unit interval [0,1]. These facts hold true, in particular, for covering dimension dim and cohomological dimension dimG, where G is any Abelian group.     

On continuously irreducible continua

We study continuously irreducible continua and characterize them as those continua of type λ for which the set function T is continuous. Using results by Mohler and Oversteegen, we present a new family of one-dimensional continua for which the set function T is continuous and no element of the family contains a pseudo-arc. We study the hyperspaces of these continua.     

Almost disjoint families of connected sets

We investigate the question which (separable metrizable) spaces have a ‘large’ almost disjoint family of connected (and locally connected) sets. Every compact space of dimension at least 2 as well as all compact spaces containing an ‘uncountable star’ have such a family. Our results show that the situation for 1-dimensional compacta is unclear.     

The Sarkovskii order for periodic continua II

In this paper it is shown that the existence of three maximal proper periodic continua for a map of a hereditarily decomposable chainable continuum onto itself implies the existence of a maximal proper periodic continuum with odd period greater than one. Hence, while the periods of such continua do follow the Sarkovskii order apart from the case in which the ambient space is the union of two maximal proper periodic continua with period two, for any nondegenerate terminal segment of the Sarkovskii order that fails to contain an odd integer greater than one, there does not exist a map of a hereditarily decomposable chainable continuum onto itself for which the set of all periods of such continua is the prescribed terminal segment. It is also shown that, for any terminal segment of the Sarkovskii order that does contain an odd integer greater than one, there is a map of [0,1] onto itself for which the set of all periods of such continua is the prescribed terminal segment.