Thick families of geodesics and differentiation (Q2073029)

The paper contributes to the characterization theory of metric spaces that admit bilipschitz embeddings into Banach spaces with the Radon-Nikodým property (RNP). \textit{J. Cheeger} and \textit{B. Kleiner} [Geom. Funct. Anal. 19, No.~4, 1017--1028 (2009; Zbl 1200.58007)] proved that a doubling metric measure space satisfying the Poincaré inequality admits an RNP Lipschitz differentiability structure, for which every Lipschitz function with values in a Banach space with the RNP is differentiable almost everywhere. They proved that a metric measure space with an RNP Lipschitz differentiability structure admitting a bilipschitz embedding into a space with the RNP should satisfy the condition that every tangent cone at almost every point is bilipschitz equivalent to a Euclidean space. The reviewer [\textit{M. Ostrovskii}, J. Math. Anal. Appl. 409, No.~2, 906--910 (2014; Zbl 1322.46017)] proved that a Banach space does not have the RNP if and only if it contains a bilipschitz copy of a metric space containing a thick family of geodesics. (It is worth mentioning that the definition of a thick family of geodesics in [loc. cit.] is confusing. It was clarified in [\textit{M.~Ostrovskii}, Assoc. Women Math. Ser. 4, 307--347 (2016; Zbl 1406.46014)].) On the other hand [\textit{M.~I. Ostrovskii}, Fundam. Math. 227, No.~1, 85--95 (2014; Zbl 1494.46015)], there exist metric spaces that neither admit bilipschitz embeddings into Banach spaces with the RNP nor contain a bilipschitz copy of a metric space containing a thick family of geodesics. Two main results of the present paper are (1) A complete metric space containing a thick family of geodesics contains a structure which, on the one hand, is a weakened form of an RNP differentiability structure, and, on the other hand, this structure, through an analysis of tangent cones, implies that the metric space does not admit a bilipschitz embedding into an RNP space (Theorem~1.3). (2) Every non-RNP Banach space contains a bilipschitz copy of a metric measure space having the RNP Lipschitz differentiability structure but failing the condition on the tangent cones stated above (Theorem~1.6).