The Gromov-Hausdorff metric on the space of compact metric spaces is strictly intrinsic (Q520617): Difference between revisions

A triple \((X^{\prime}, Y^{\prime}, Z)\) is said to be a realisation of a pair \((X, Y)\) of metric spaces if \(Z\) is a metric space, \(X^{\prime}\) and \(Y^{\prime}\) are subspaces of \(Z\), \(X^{\prime}\) is isometric to \(X\), and \(Y^{\prime}\) is isometric to \(Y\). The Gromov-Hausdorff distance \(d_{GH}(X, Y)\) of metric spaces \(X\) and \(Y\) is defined as the infimum of all \(\epsilon > 0\) for which there exists a realisation \((X^{\prime}, Y^{\prime}, Z)\) of \((X, Y)\) such that \(d_{H}(X^{\prime}, Y^{\prime}) \leq \epsilon\), where \(d_{H}\) is the Hausdorff metric. It is well known that \(d_{GH}\) is a metric on the set \(\mathcal{M}\) of isometry classes of compact metric spaces. The authors prove that \((\mathcal{M}, d_{GH})\) has the midpoint property, i.e., for every \(X, Y \in \mathcal{M} \) there exists an \(M \in \mathcal{M}\) such that \(d_{GH}(X, M) = d_{GH}(M, Y) = \frac{1}{2}d_{GH}(X, Y)\). It follows from known results that \((\mathcal{M}, d_{GH})\) is strictly intrinsic, i.e., for every \(X, Y \in \mathcal{M}\) there exists a geodesic \(\gamma:[0, 1] \rightarrow \mathcal{M}\) connecting \(X\) and \(Y\). (Reviewer's remark: In a recent paper, \textit{S. Chowdhury} and \textit{F. Mémoli} have shown how to explicitly construct such a geodesic [``Constructing geodesics on the space of compact metric spaces'', Preprint, \url{arXiv:1603.02385}]).