Cheeger type Sobolev spaces for metric space targets (Q1424806)

The author generalizes \textit{J. Cheeger's} definition of Sobolev spaces of functions on metric spaces [Geom. Funct. Anal. 9, No. 3, 428--517 (1999; Zbl 0942.58018)] to functions taking values in a metric space. For functions with values in general metric spaces, only the energy map and the notion of Sobolev space is defined and a few basic results are proved. If the function takes values in geodesic length spaces with a convex metric, many results of Cheeger's paper carry over and most of the proofs are based on Cheeger's ideas. For completeness, however, the proofs are given in detail. A major problem is the lack of a linear structure in metric spaces. One can (partly) overcome this by using barycentres in CAT(0)-spaces, or by embedding the metric space into a Banach space. For the CAT(0)-spaces, the Dirichlet problem is solved following \textit{J. Jost}'s approach [cf. Nonpositive curvature: geometric and analytic aspects, Lectures in Mathematics, ETH Zürich. Basel: Birkhäuser (1997; Zbl 0896.53002)]. If the functions take values in a locally compact, locally geodesically complete Alexandrov space with bounded (from above) curvature, the minimality of the upper pointwise Lipschitz constant function for locally Lipschitz maps is proved. The last section deals with the case when the metric space is being isometrically imbedded into a Banach space. In general, this does not leave Cheeger's construction invariant, but in the paper some situations are identified when this does happen. In these cases, several types of Sobolev spaces (of Korevaar-Schoen-type and of Hajłasz's type) are compared with the author's Cheeger-type approach.