Dispersion point
In topology, a dispersion point or explosion point is a point in a topological space the removal of which leaves the space highly disconnected. More specifically, if X is a connected topological space containing the point p and at least two other points, p is a dispersion point for X if and only if [math]\displaystyle{ X\setminus \{p\} }[/math] is totally disconnected (every subspace is disconnected, or, equivalently, every connected component is a single point). If X is connected and [math]\displaystyle{ X\setminus \{p\} }[/math] is totally separated (for each two points x and y there exists a clopen set containing x and not containing y) then p is an explosion point. A space can have at most one dispersion point or explosion point. Every totally separated space is totally disconnected, so every explosion point is a dispersion point.
The Knaster–Kuratowski fan has a dispersion point; any space with the particular point topology has an explosion point.
If p is an explosion point for a space X, then the totally separated space [math]\displaystyle{ X\setminus \{p\} }[/math] is said to be pulverized.
References
- Abry, Mohammad; Dijkstra, Jan J.; van Mill, Jan (2007), "On one-point connectifications", Topology and its Applications 154 (3): 725–733, doi:10.1016/j.topol.2006.09.004, http://www.math.vu.nl/~vanmill/papers/papers2007/abry.pdf. (Note that this source uses hereditarily disconnected and totally disconnected for the concepts referred to here respectively as totally disconnected and totally separated.)
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