On inclusion and summands of bounded closed convex sets (Q812813)

Let \(X\) be a real Hausdorff topological vector space and \(\mathcal{B}(X)\) be the family of all nonempty bounded closed convex subsets of \(X\). If \(A,B\in\mathcal{B}(X)\) then \(A\dot{+}B=\overline{\{a+b\mid a\in A, b\in B\}}\) is the generalized Minkowski sum of \(A\) and \(B\). The set \(A\in\mathcal{B}(X)\) is called a summand of \(B\in\mathcal{B}(X)\) if there exists \(C\in\mathcal{B}(X)\) such that \(A\dot{+}C=B\). The authors prove that if \(A,B,F\in\mathcal{B}(X)\), \(A\cap B\neq\emptyset\) and \(A\cap B\subset (A\dot{+} F)\cup (B\dot{+} F)\) then \(A\cap B\subset A\dot{+}F\) or \(A\cap B\subset B\dot{+}F\) whenever one of the following conditions holds: (i) the space \(X\) is less-than-three dimensional; (ii) \(A\cup B\) is convex; (iii) \(F\) is a singleton. Moreover, under some hypotheses the characterization of \(A\) and \(B\) such that \(A\cap B\) is a summand of \(A\cup B\) is given.