Functional extenders and set-valued retractions (Q1931559)

In this paper, the authors obtain a characterization of set-valued retracts of spaces in terms of functional extenders: for \(X \subset Y\), there exists a continuous compact-valued retraction from \(Y\) onto \(X\) if and only if there exists a normed weakly additive extender \(u: C^{\ast}(X) \rightarrow C^{\ast}(Y)\) with compact supports preserving \(\min\) and weakly preserving \(\max\). Similar characterizations are obtained for upper (lower) semi-continuous compact-valued retractions. Using this, the authors obtain a characterization of absolute extensors for \(0\)-dimensional spaces, as well as absolute extensors for \(1\)-dimensional spaces. Here, spaces are Tychonoff, and \(C^{\ast}(X)\) denotes the class of real-valued bounded continuous functions. A map \(u: C^{\ast}(X) \rightarrow C^{\ast}(Y)\), where \(X \subset Y\), is an extender if \(u(f)\) extends \(f\) for all \(f\in C^{\ast}(X)\). \textit{T. Radul} [Mat. Stud. 31, No. 2, 207--210 (2009; Zbl 1199.18008)] introduced the class \({\mathfrak R}_{\max}(X)\) (resp., \({\mathfrak R}_{\min}(X)\)) of all normed weakly additive functionals on \(C^{\ast}(X)\) which preserve max (resp., min) and weakly preserve min (resp., max). Here, a functional \(\mu: C^{\ast}(X) \rightarrow {\mathbb R}\) is (i) normed, (ii) weakly additive, (iii) preserving max (resp., min), (iv) weakly preserving min (resp., max) if for every \(f, g\in C^{\ast}(X)\) and constant function \(c_X\), (i) \(\mu(1_X) = 1\), (ii) \(\mu(f + c_X) = \mu(f) + c\), (iii) \(\mu (\max\{f, g\}) = \max \{\mu(f), \mu(g)\}\) (resp., \(\mu (\min\{f, g\}) = \min \{\mu(f), \mu(g)\}\)), (iv) \(\mu (\min\{f, c_X\}) = \min \{\mu(f), c\}\) (resp., \(\mu (\max\{f, c_X\}) = \max \{\mu(f), c\}\)). The classes are equipped with the subspace topology of the product \({\mathbb R}^{C^{\ast}(X)}\). The results of the paper are based on the description of the supports of the functionals from \({\mathfrak R}_{\max}(X) \cup {\mathfrak R}_{\min}(X)\). The authors also show that \({\mathfrak R}_{\max}(X)_c\) and \({\mathfrak R}_{\min}(X)_c\) are homeomorphic to the hyperspace \(\text{ext}_c X\) of the non-empty compact subsets of \(X\) with the Vietoris topology.