Rigidity of symmetric products (Q387188)

For a continuum (i.e., a nondegenerate compact connected metric space) \(X\) and a positive integer \(n\), let \(F_n (X)\) denote the \(n\)-th symmetric product of \(X\), that is, the hyperspace of all nonempty subsets of \(X\) with at most \(n\) points whose topology is endowed with the Hausdorff metric. The hyperspace \(F_n (X)\) is said to be rigid provided that for each homeomorphism \(h : F_n (X) \to F_n(X)\) we have that \(h(F_1(X)) =F_1(X)\). Here \(F_1(X)\) is an isometric copy of \(X\). In this paper, the authors study the rigidity of symmetric products. In particular, they prove the following theorem: If \(n \geq 4\) and \(X\) is a wired continuum, then \(F_n (X)\) is rigid. Here the class of wired continua includes finite graphs, dendrites with closed set of end points, almost meshed continua, compactifications of the ray, compactifications of the real line and indecomposable continua whose proper subcontinua are arcs (which are called indecomposable arc continua). The authors also study the rigidity of \(F_2(X)\) and \(F_3(X)\) for Peano continua, manifolds, smooth fans and indecomposable arc continua.