Analysis on Laakso graphs with application to the structure of transportation cost spaces (Q2055392)

The authors continue the study of the geometry of transportation cost spaces (also called Arens-Eells spaces and Lipschitz-free spaces) on certain finite metric spaces they initiated in [\textit{S.~J. Dilworth} et al., Can. J. Math. 72, No.~3, 774-804 (2020; Zbl 1462.46010)]. They focus on Laakso graphs \(L_n\) and multi-branching diamonds \(D_n^k\); these are relevant families since their bi-Lipschitz embeddability characterizes non-superreflexive Banach spaces. The authors prove a lower bound for the Banach-Mazur distance from the transportation cost space on Laakso graphs to \(\ell_1^N\). To this end, they construct orthogonal bases for the cycle and cut spaces and use them to estimate the projection constant of \(\operatorname{Lip}_0(L_n)\). The authors also calculate the exact projection constant of \(\operatorname{Lip}_0(D_{n,k})\) and deduce a lower bound for the Banach-Mazur distance to \(\ell_1^N\) that improves the one they obtained in [loc. cit.]. In the last section, examples of finite metric spaces whose transportation cost spaces contain \(\ell_\infty^3\) and \(\ell_\infty^4\) isometrically are provided (we refer the reader to [\textit{M.~Alexander} et al. J. Funct. Anal. 280, No.~4, Article ID 108849, 39~p. (2021; Zbl 1459.52007)] for an example isometric to~\(\ell_\infty^3\)).