Examples and applications of the density of strongly norm attaining Lipschitz maps (Q2039500)

Following [\textit{G. Godefroy}, Commentat. Math. 55, No.~2, 89--118 (2015; Zbl 1358.46015)], the authors study (strongly) norm attaining Lipschitz functions defined on a complete pointed metric space \(M\) with values in a Banach space~\(Y\). The main results around this topic are about the density of the set of norm attaining \(Y\)-valued Lipschitz functions on \(M\), \(\mathrm{SNA}(M,Y)\), in the space of all Lipschitz functions, \(\mathrm{Lip}_0(M,Y)\). First, the authors prove that for every Banach space \(Y\), \(\mathrm{SNA}(\mathbb{T},Y)\) is never dense in \(\mathrm{Lip}_0(\mathbb{T},Y)\), where \(\mathbb{T}\) denotes the unit circle in \(\mathbb{R}^2\). However, the authors exhibit metric spaces \(M\) such that the free space on \(M\), \(\mathcal{F}(M)\), fails the Radon-Nikodym property (in fact, \(M\) contains isometric copies of \([0,1]\)) and satisfying that \(\mathrm{SNA}(M,Y)\) is dense in \(\mathrm{Lip}_0(M,Y)\) for every Banach space \(Y\). This clever example answers questions in [\textit{G.~Godefroy}, loc. cit.] and [\textit{B.~Cascales} et al., J. Funct. Anal. 277, No.~6, 1677--1717 (2019; Zbl 1447.46010)] and displays a really new family of metric spaces where the density problem has a positive solution. The paper finishes giving interesting and new necessary conditions on a metric space \(M\) in order to get the density of \(\mathrm{SNA}(M,Y)\) in \(\mathrm{Lip}_0(M,Y)\). The exhibited results show a clear advancement in the research around this topic with the construction of new and very interesting examples.