Symmetric products as cones (Q2401550)

All continua in this paper are assumed to be metric; a continuum is a \textit{cone} if it is of the form \((X\times [0,1])/\equiv\), where \(\langle x,s\rangle\equiv\langle y,t\rangle\) if either \(\langle x,s\rangle=\langle y,t\rangle\) or \(s=t=1\). A continuum is a \textit{finite graph} if it is a union of finitely many arcs, no two of which share more than end points; it is a \textit{fan} if it is arcwise connected and hereditarily unicoherent, with exactly one ramification point. Given a continuum \(X\) and \(n\in\mathbb{N}\), \(2^X\) (resp., \(F_n(X)\), \(C_n(X)\)) is the hyperspace -- with the Vietoris topology -- consisting of all closed subsets of \(X\) that are nonempty (resp., nonempty with at most \(n\) points, nonempty with at most \(n\) components). The authors prove that if the continuum \(X\) is a cone then so are all the hyperspaces \(2^X\), \(F_n(X)\), and \(C_n(X)\). As a partial converse, they prove the (quite deep) result that if \(X\) is either a finite graph or a fan and \(F_n(X)\) is a cone for some \(n\geq 2\), then \(X\) is a cone as well.