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Extremality, Stationarity and Generalized Separation of Collections of Sets

The core arguments used in various proofs of the extremal principle and its extensions as well as in primal and dual characterizations of approximate stationarity and transversality of collections of sets are exposed, analyzed and refined, leading to a unifying theory, encompassing all existing approaches to obtaining 'extremal' statements. For that, we examine and clarify quantitative relationships between the parameters involved in the respective definitions and statements. Some new characterizations of extremality properties are obtained.