The partially ordered set of one-point extensions

A space Y is called an extension of a space X if Y contains X as a dense subspace. Two extensions of X are said to be equivalent if there is a homeomorphism between them which fixes X point-wise. For two (equivalence classes of) extensions Y and Y^′ of X let Y?Y^′ if there is a continuous function of Y^′ into Y which fixes X point-wise. An extension Y of X is called a one-point extension of X if Y?X is a singleton. Let P be a topological property. An extension Y of X is called a P-extension of X if it has P.One-point P-extensions comprise the subject matter of this article. Here P is subject to some mild requirements. We define an anti-order-isomorphism between the set of one-point Tychonoff extensions of a (Tychonoff) space X (partially ordered by ?) and the set of compact non-empty subsets of its outgrowth βX?X (partially ordered by ⊆). This enables us to study the order-structure of various sets of one-point extensions of the space X by relating them to the topologies of certain subspaces of its outgrowth. We conclude the article with the following conjecture. For a Tychonoff spaces X denote by U(X) the set of all zero-sets of βX which miss X.

Conjecture. For locally compact spaces X and Y the partially ordered sets(U(X),⊆)and(U(Y),⊆)are order-isomorphic if and only if the spacesclβX(βX?υX)andclβY(βY?υY)are homeomorphic.