Closed orbits and the hyperspace of \(\frac{1}{2}\)-homogeneous continua (Q2219284)

A space is 1/2-homogeneous if it has exactly two orbits under the action of its group of autohomeomorphisms. This important notion has been studied quite a bit in recent years. It is of interest to detect the structure of the two orbits of such a space. In the present paper it is shown among other things that if \(X\) is a decomposable, irreducible and 1/2-homogeneous metric continuum, then one of these orbits is actually closed. And moreover, \(X\) is unicoherent. The authors also introduce the hyperspace of all 1/2-homogeneous subcontinua of a metric continuum. If \(X\) is a dendroid, then this hyperspace coincides with the hyperspace of all subarcs of \(X\). For a locally connected continuum \(X\), this hyperspace together with the collection of all one-point subsets of \(X\), seen as a subspace of the hyperspace of all nonempty subcontinua of \(X\), is compact if and only if \(X\) is a dendrite. There are challenging open problems and conjectures in this paper.