Steiner problem in the Gromov-Hausdorff space: the case of finite metric spaces (Q2317365)

Let \((X, d)\) be a metric space and let \(M\) be a finite subset of \(X\). Recall that a tree is a connected graph without cycles. Let us denote by \([T, M]\) the set of all weighted trees \(T = T(w)\) with the weights \(w \colon E(T) \to [0 ,\infty)\) such that \[ X \supseteq V(T) \supseteq M \] and \(w(e) = d(x, y)\) for every \(e = \{x, y\} \in E(T)\), where \(V(T)\) is the set of vertices of \(T\) and \(E(T)\) is the set of edges of \(T\). Write \[ \operatorname{smt}(M) := \inf_{T \in [T, M]} \sum_{e \in E(T)} w(e). \] The Steiner minimal tree on \(M\) is a tree \(T^{*} \in [T, M]\) for which \[ \sum_{e \in E(T^{*})} w(e) = \operatorname{smt}(M). \] The main result of the paper claims that the Steiner minimal tree exists in the metric space \((X, d)\) of compact metric spaces endowed with the Gromov-Hausdorff distance if \(M \subseteq X\) is a finite set of finite metric spaces.