Comparing chains in a Banach space (Q2184177)

In the reviewed paper, the author establishes connections between two different notions of flat chains in Banach spaces, one proposed by \textit{T. De Pauw} and \textit{R. Hardt} [Am. J. Math. 134, No. 1, 1--69 (2012; Zbl 1252.49070)], and the other by \textit{T. Adams} [J. Geom. Anal. 18, No. 1, 1--28 (2008; Zbl 1148.49037)]. It is proved that Adams' flat chains are also De Pauw-Hardt's flat chains; the other inclusion holds when the ambient Banach space has MAP (metric approximation property). Moreover, the corresponding flat norms are equivalent, modulo universal constants depending only on the degree of the flat chains. De Pauw-Hardt's flat chains are defined via the slicing mass, which is constructed first on the Lipschitz chains so that it is lower semicontinuous with respect to the flat topology (defined by ``filling'' as usual). On the other hand, Adams' flat chains are defined via evaluating elements in the dual Banach space on convex polytopes, and by induction on the dimension of the polytopes. Roughly speaking, these two notions of flat chains can be compared because they can both be obtained from suitable completions of polyhedral chains. A Banach space \(E\) (with norm \(\|\bullet\|\)) is said to have MAP if and only if for each compact subset \(K \subset E\) and each \(\epsilon>0\), there exist a finite-dimensional subspace \(V \leq E\) and a \(1\)-Lipschitz map \(\phi\) from \(E\) onto \(V\) such that \(\sup_{x \in K} \|x-\phi(x)\| < \epsilon\). If \(T\) is a normal chain in a Banach space \(E\) with MAP, then the pushforward \(\phi_\#T\) is a normal chain in a finite-dimensional vector space, where \(\phi\) is as in the above definition for MAP. On the other hand, thanks to the homotopy formula [\textit{Th. De Pauw} et al., Homology of normal chains and cohomology of charges. Providence, RI: American Mathematical Society (AMS) (2017; Zbl 1382.46059), Corollary 10.3], the flat norm of \((T-\phi_\#T)\) goes to zero as the dimension of the range of \(\phi\) increases to \(\infty\). The above observations, which relate the original problem to chains in finite-dimensional vectorspaces, are central to the proof.