Uniqueness and rigidity of the second symmetric product of standard universal dendrites (Q6049949)

Given a metric continuum \(X\), let \(F_{n}(X)\) be the hyperspace of nonempty subsets of \(X\) with at most \(n\) points, endowed with the Hausdorff metric. A continuum \(X\) has unique hyperspace \(F_{n}(X)\) provided the following implication holds: if \(Y\) is a continuum satisfying that \(F_{n}(X)\) is homeomorphic to \(F_{n}(Y)\), then \(X\) is homeomorphic to \(Y\). A dendrite is a locally connected metric continuum without simple closed curves. An interesting problem on hyperspaces is to determine whether each dendrite \(D\) has unique hyperspace \(F_{n}(D)\). There are several partial answers to this problem. It is known that the answer is positive for dendrites with closed set of end-points. In the paper under review, the author works with dendrites on the other extreme. A universal dendrite \(D_{m}\) (\(m\geq 3\)) is characterized by the following properties: each ramification point in \(D_{m}\) has order \(m\) and for each arc \(A\) in \(D_{m}\), the set of ramification points of \(D_{m}\) that belong to \(A\) is dense in \(A\). These dendrites \(D_{m}\) have dense set of end-points, so \(D_{m}\) is very far from having closed set of end-points. Using unicoherence techniques the author of this paper proves that for each \(m\geq 5\), \(D_{m}\) has unique hyperspace \(F_{2}(D_{m})\). He also proves that if \(m\geq 5\), then each homeomorphism \(h\) from \(F_{2}(D_{m})\) onto \(F_{2}(D_{m})\) satisfies \(h(F_{1}(D_{m}))=F_{1}(D_{m})\). As we can see, the problem of the uniqueness of the hyperspace \(F_{n}(D)\), for dendrites \(D\), still offers many possibilities of research. For more information about related problems see [\textit{A. Illanes}, Quest. Answers Gen. Topology 30, No. 1, 21--44 (2012; Zbl 1275.54006)].