On tangent cones of Alexandrov spaces with curvature bounded below (Q1593644): Difference between revisions

A non-negatively curved Alexandrov space \(\mathcal K\) is constructed with the following remarkable property: At some point \(0\in\mathcal K\) its tangent cone (with canonical metric) is not an intrinsic metric space. (A metric space is called intrinsic if there is an almost middle point for any two points in the space). This property means roughly that the distances are measured by the lengths of curves, and it distinguishes geometrically significant metric spaces among many others. It is known that such a space (if it exists at all) must be infinite dimensional. However, for a long time there were no corresponding examples. By constructing the space \(\mathcal K\), the author solves this problem. The space \(\mathcal K\) can be easily desribed. It is homeomorphic to the Hilbert space \(l^2(N)\) and is constructed as the boundary of a convex set in \(l^2(N)\). More precisely, \(\mathcal K\) is the graph of a convex function \(f:l^2(N)\to R_+\), which depends on some parameter \(\mu\) defining the slope of \(f\). It turns out that there exist two elements \(\sigma_+\), \(\sigma_-\) in the direction space \(S_0\mathcal K\) at \(0\in\mathcal K\subset R\times l^2(N)\) for which under an appropriate choice of \(\mu\) there is no almost midpoint in \(S_0\mathcal K\) and hence the metric of the tangent cone at 0 is not intrinsic. This property of \(f\) is achieved by an elegant construction of cutting off an infinite sequence of appropriate pieces of \(l^2(N)\).