Metric and periodic lines in real inner product space geometries (Q1424403)

Generalizing the notion of minimizing geodesic in the sense of \textit{L. M. Blumenthal} and \textit{K. Menger} [Studies in geometry (San Francisco: W.H. Freeman and Company. XIV) (1970; Zbl 0204.53401)] to the metric space setting one gets metric lines for non-closed and periodic lines for closed geodesics. The author proves that in both the Weierstrass model of dimension-free hyperbolic geometry and the standard inner-product space model of dimension-free Euclidean geometry, the metric lines are precisely the classical lines, and there are no periodic lines, whereas in the spherical and elliptic case the periodic lines are precisely the classical lines, and there are no metric lines. The elementary proofs rely on the solution of functional equations.