Isometric structure of transportation cost spaces on finite metric spaces (Q2081200)

The paper surveys and further studies the Banach space theoretical isometric structure of transportation cost spaces (known also as Lipschitz-free spaces or Arens-Eells spaces) \(TC(X)\) on finite metric spaces \(X\). The authors consider a canonical graph \(G(E,X)\) associated to a finite metric space \(X\), and to each element of \(\ell_1(E)\) they associate an element in \(TC(X)\) (called \textit{roadmap} in the paper). Several isometric properties of the graphs and roadmaps mentioned above are studied. Among other results, a new condition is found (expressed in terms of roadmaps, see Proposition~3.3) which prevents \(TC(X)\) from containing isometrically \(\ell_\infty^n\). Several examples of metric spaces for which \(\ell_\infty^n\) does not embed into \(TC(X)\) are deduced including, e.g., the result that \(\ell_\infty^5\) does not isometrically embed into \(TC(X)\), where \(X = \{1,\dots,n\}^2\subset \mathbb{R}^2\).