The Cartan-Hadamard theorem for metric spaces with local geodesic bicombings (Q1747825)

A bicombing on a metric space is a certain collection of paths in the space. In this article the author proves the Cartan-Hadamard Theorem for metric spaces with a convex local geodesic bicombing. This metric notion is, roughly speaking, a weak form of non-positive curvature, and spaces with convex geodesics bicombings have been shown to share some of the properties of \(\mathrm{CAT}(0)\) and Busemann spaces. The author also obtains a local-to-global theorem stating that complete, locally compact, simply-connected, locally injective length spaces with locally finite combinatorial dimension are injective metric spaces. As an application of this result, the author shows that a locally compact absolute \(1\)-Lipschitz uniform neighborhood retract with locally finite combinatorial dimension is an absolute \(1\)-Lipschitz retract.