Countably compact hyperspaces and Frolík sums

Let H⁰(X) (H(X)) denote the set of all (nonempty) closed subsets of X endowed with the Vietoris topology. A basic problem concerning H(X) is to characterize those X for which H(X) is countably compact. We conjecture that u-compactness of X for some u∈ω^∗ (or equivalently: all powers of X are countably compact) may be such a characterization. We give some results that point into this direction.We define the property R(κ): for every family of closed subsets of X separated by pairwise disjoint open sets and any family of natural numbers, the product is countably compact, and prove that if H(X) is countably compact for a T₂-space X then X satisfies R(κ) for all κ. A space has R(1) iff all its finite powers are countably compact, so this generalizes a theorem of J. Ginsburg: if X is T₂ and H(X) is countably compact, then so is Xn for all n<ω. We also prove that, for κ<t, if the T₃ space X satisfies a weak form of R(κ), the orbit of every point in X is dense, and X contains κ pairwise disjoint open sets, then Xκ is countably compact. This generalizes the following theorem of J. Cao, T. Nogura, and A. Tomita: if X is T₃, homogeneous, and H(X) is countably compact, then so is Xω.Then we study the Frolík sum (also called “one-point countable-compactification”) of a family . We use the Frolík sum to produce countably compact spaces with additional properties (like first countability) whose hyperspaces are not countably compact. We also prove that any product _∏α<κH⁰(Xα) embeds into .