Brush spaces and the fixed point property (Q536065)

A space \(X\) has the fixed point property (f.p.p.) provided that for every continuous function \(f\) from \(X\) into itself, there exists a point \(p\) in \(X\) such that \(f(p)=p\). The experience has taught us that many natural topological constructions (as is the case of cylinders, cones, products, unions of spaces with nice intersections, etc.) do not preserve the f.p.p. In this paper the authors succeed in proposing a new construction that behaves well with the f.f.p. They introduce the notions of a brush space and a weak brush space. Each of these spaces has a compact connected core with attached connected fibers and may be either compact or non-compact. They show that these spaces have the f.p.p. if and only if subspaces with core and finitely many fibers have the f.f.p. As a consequence they show that a brush space has the f.p.p. if and only if its core and each of its fibers has the f.p.p. They show examples of spaces that have representations as (weak) brush spaces. In particular, they apply their result to the generalized Alexandroff/Urysohn squares studied in \textit{C. L. Hagopian} and \textit{M. M. Marsh} [Topology Appl. 157, No.~6, 997--1001 (2010; Zbl 1193.54033)].