Lipschitz quotients from metric trees and from Banach spaces containing \(\ell _{1}\) (Q1865305)

Lipschitz quotient maps between metric spaces were introduced and studied earlier by the authors along with \textit{S. M. Bates} [Geom. Funct. Anal. 9, 1092-1127 (1999; Zbl 0954.46014)]. Among other results, they proved the proposition that if \(Y\) is a Lipschitz quotient of a superreflexive Banach space \(X\) then \(Y^{*}\) is crudely finitely representable in the sense that there is a constant \(\lambda\) so that for every finite-dimensional (linear) subspace \(F\) of \(Y^{*}\) there is a finite-dimensional subspace \(E\) of \(X^{*}\) so that \(d(E, F) \leq \lambda\), where \(d\) is the Banach-Mazur distance. The main result of the present paper is to show that this proposition may fail to hold for many common Banach spaces. The authors first prove that if \(X\) is any separable Banach space containing \(\ell_1\) then there is a Lipschitz quotient map from \(X\) onto any separable Banach space \(Y\). More specifically, it is proved that if \(X\) is a separable Banach space containing a subspace isomorphic to \(\ell_1\), then, for \(\varepsilon > 0\), every separable, complete, metrically convex space is a \((1 + \varepsilon)\)-Lipschitz quotient of \(X\). The non-separable versions of this theorem are considered in a subsequent section. The main theorem of that section implies, in particular, that if \(Y\) is a Banach space (or, more generally, a complete metrically convex space) whose density character is at most that of the continuum, then there is a Lipschitz quotient map from \(\ell_\infty\) onto \(Y\). Some open problems are mentioned.