Quotients of \(n\)-fold hyperspaces (Q897984)

Given a continuum \(X\) and an integer \(n\geq 2\), let \({{C}_{n}}\left( X \right)\) be the \(n\)-fold hyperspace of \(X\) consisting of nonempty closed subsets of \(X\) with at most \(n\) components. We consider the quotient space \(C_{1}^{n}\left( X \right)={{C}_{n}}\left( X \right)/C{}_{1}\left( X \right)\), with the quotient topology. Let \(q_{X}^{n1}:{{C}_{n}}\left( X \right)\to C_{1}^{n}\left( X \right)\) denote the quotient map. We denote \(q_{X}^{n1}\left( {{C}_{1}}\left( X \right) \right)\) by \(C_{X}^{n1}\). In this paper the following confirmations are the main results: If \(X\) is a continuum and \(n\) an integer greater than one, then: \(C_{1}^{n}\left( X \right) \;\;\left\{ C_{X}^{n1} \right\}\) is connected (Theorem 4.1); \(C_{1}^{n}\left( X \right)\) has property (b), in particular, \(C_{1}^{n}\left( X \right)\) is unicoherent (Theorem 4.2); if \({{C}_{n}}\left( X \right)\) is contractible, then \(C_{1}^{n}\left( X \right)\) is contractible (Theorem 4.4); \(C_{1}^{n}\left( \left[ 0,1 \right] \right)\) and \(C_{1}^{n}\left( {{S}^{1}} \right)\) are \(2n\)-dimensional Cantor manifolds (Theorem 4.9); \(X\) is locally connected if and only if \(C_{1}^{n}\left( X \right)\) is locally connected (Theorem 5.2); \(C_{1}^{n}\left( X \right)\) is homeomorphic to the Hilbert cube if and only if \(X\) is locally connected and does not contain free arcs (Theorem 5.6). The following confirmations are proved as well: Let \(n\) be an integer greater than one, then: A locally connected continuum \(X\) is a graph if and only if \(\dim\left( C_{1}^{n}\left( X \right) \right)<\infty \) (Theorem 5.4); if \(X\) is an absolute retract, then \(C_{1}^{n}\left( X \right)\) is an absolute retract (Theorem 5.9); if \(X\) is a continuum such that \(C_{1}^{n}\left( X \right)\) is homeomorphic to either \(C_{1}^{n}\left( \left[ 0,1 \right] \right)\) or \(C_{1}^{n}\left( {{S}^{1}} \right)\), then \(X\) is homeomorphic to either \(\left[ 0,1 \right]\) or \({{S}^{1}}\) (Theorem 5.12).