Extreme points of a continuum (Q670154)

Compacta in this paper are compact Hausdorff spaces; continua are connected compacta. If $X$ is a space and $\{a,b\}\subset X$, then $[a,b]_X$ equals the intersection of the subcontinua of $X$ that contain the set $\{a,b\}$. One may think of $[a,b]_X$ as the ``subcontinuum interval'', or just the ``interval'', determined by $a$ and $b$. The authors remark: ``Saying that $c\in[a,b]_X$ holds is a way of asserting that $c$ lies between $a$ and $b$ \dots'' One accomplishment of this paper is to import into continuum theory the notion of extreme point of a convex set as it occurs in topological vector spaces. With that in hand, this work includes some continuum-theoretic analogues of the well-known Krein-Milman theorem.