The geometry of Hamming-type metrics and their embeddings into Banach spaces (Q2055288)

This deep article is devoted to the non-linear geometry of Banach spaces. It was shown by Martin Ribe in 1976 that two uniformly homeomorphic Banach spaces have the same local structure, in other words the same finite-dimensional spaces up to some fixed distortion [\textit{M. Ribe}, Ark. Mat. 14, 237--244 (1976; Zbl 0336.46018)]. This remarkable result opened the way to the Ribe program: given a local property \((l)\) of Banach spaces, find a property \((L)\) of metric spaces which coincides with \((l)\) when restricted to the realm of Banach spaces. The Ribe program allows to transfer ideas from the structured world of Banach spaces to the wider field of metric spaces. On the other hand, topological results such as the Gorelik principle indicate (and sometimes show) that asymptotic properties of Banach spaces are uniformly or at least Lipschitz invariant. If \(E\) and \(M\) are metric spaces, we say that \(E\) coarsely embeds into \(M\) if there exist two functions \(\rho\) and \(\omega\) from \([0, \infty)\) to itself with \(\rho\) tending to \(\infty\) at \(\infty\) and a map \(f:E\rightarrow M\) such that \(\rho (d_E(x,y))\leq d_M(f(x), f(y))\leq \omega (d_E(x,y))\) for all \((x,y)\in E^2\). Related notions of equi-coarse embeddings or Lipschitz embeddings can easily be defined. The present article, which follows previous works by the same authors, focuses on Tsirelson-type Banach spaces, more precisely on reflexive asymptotic-\(c_0\) spaces. A concentration inequality shows that there is no equi-coarse embedding of the sequence of Hamming graphs in a reflexive asymptotic-\(c_0\) space, but this property does not characterize this class of Banach spaces. More general Hamming metrics on Hamming graphs, associated with spaces with unconditional bases which generalize \(l_1\), are defined in this article, and it is shown that a reflexive Banach space \(X\) is asymptotic-\(c_0\) if and only if there is no equi-Lipschitz embedding of Hamming graphs equipped with such a Hamming metric. A corollary of this result is that the class of reflexive asymptotic-\(c_0\) spaces is coanalytic non-Borel in the usual Effros-Borel structure on the set \(SB\) of separable Banach spaces. The problem of equi-coarse embeddability of the sequence of the usual Hamming graphs in reflexive but non asymptotic-\(c_0\) spaces is also considered, and a critical example is investigated: the space \(T^*(T^*)\) which is somehow a Tsirelson space ``on the square''. This reflexive space is not asymptotic-\(c_0\), but all its unconditional spreading models are \(c_0\), and it enjoys a weaker asymptotic property which rules out the existence of ``natural'' coarse embeddings of the Hamming graphs. With this work in progress, the authors dive into the most challenging issues of the Ribe program.