Zoom Talk given on Wednesday November 8, 2023

Abstract: The Vietoris space of compact subsets of a given Hausdorff space yields an endofunctor V on the category of Hausdorff spaces. Vietoris polynomial endofunctors on that category are built from V, the identity and constant functors by forming products, coproducts and compositions. These functors are known to have terminal coalgebras and we deduce that they also have initial algebras. We present an analogous class of endofunctors on the category of extended metric spaces, using in lieu of V the Hausdorff functor H. We prove that the ensuing Hausdorff polynomial functors have terminal coalgebras and initial algebras. Whereas the canonical constructions of terminal coalgebras for Vietoris polynomial functors takes omega steps, one needs \omega + \omega steps in general for Hausdorff ones. We also give a new proof that the closed set functor on metric spaces has no fixed points. This is joint work with Jiri Adamek and Stefan Milius.