Polygonal equalities and virtual degeneracy in \(L_p\)-spaces (Q2338859)

The aim of this paper is to give a complete description of the subsets of \(L_p\) for \(0 <p \leq 2\) that have strict \(p\)-negative type. Here, \(L_p\) is a classical \(L_p\)-space over some measure space and of dimension at least \(2\). For developing this analysis, the authors study non-trivial \(p\)-polygonal equalities in \(L_p\). These equalities can be expressed as \[ \sum_{j,i=1}^n \alpha_j \alpha_i \| z_j -z_i\|^p_p=0, \] where \(\{z_1,\dots,z_n\}\) is a subset of \(L_p\) and \(\alpha_1,\dots, \alpha_n\) are non-zero real numbers that add up to zero. This research follows some previous studies by Elsner, Han, Koltracht, Neumann and Zippin for the case \(p=1\). Some other results related to this kind of equalities are connected with the analysis of isometries for general metric spaces, and allow to find relevant metric structural properties of subspaces of \(L_p\). Let us explain some fundamental definitions. Let \(p \geq 0\) and let \((X,d)\) be a metric space. It has \(p\)-negative type if and only if for all finite subsets \(\{z_1,\dots,z_n\} \subseteq X\) and all scalar \(n\)-tuples \((\alpha_1,\dots,\alpha_n) \in \mathbb R^n\) that add up to zero, we have \[ \sum_{j,i=1}^n d(z_j,z_i)^p \alpha_j \alpha_i \leq 0. \] By a known result of \textit{I. J. Schoenberg} [Trans. Am. Math. Soc. 44, 522--536 (1938; Zbl 0019.41502; JFM 64.0617.02)], it is known that for \(0 < p \leq 2\), \(L_p\) has \(p\)-negative type but it does not have \(q\)-negative type for any \(q >p\). In Section 3, and using some rather involved results on \((s,t)\)-simplices, the authors prove the following characterization of metric spaces of \(p\)-finite type (Theorem 3.18). A metric space \((X,d)\) has \(p\)-negative type if and only if \(\gamma_p(D) \geq 0\) for each signed simplex \(D\) in \(X\), where \(\gamma_p\) is an index associated to each signed \((s,t)\)-simplex \(D\) that is called the \(p\)-simplex gap of \(D\) in the metric space. Section 4 is devoted to the study of the polygonal equalities in \(L_p\)-spaces. Using the previous results, the authors prove results like Theorem 4.15, which establishes that if \((X,d)\) is a metric space that has strict \(q\)-negative type for some \(q \leq p\), then \((X,d)\) is not isometric to any metric subspace of \(L_p\) that admits a virtually degenerate simplex. In particular, \((X,d)\) is not isometric to any metric subspace of \(L_p\) that has non-empty interior. In Section 5, polygonal equalities in inner product spaces are studied. More applications are given in Section 6, where the so-called virtually degenerated subspaces -- those that admit a virtually degenerated simplex -- are studied. Some open problems are presented in Section 7.