Lipschitz-free spaces and Schur properties (Q2627927)

The theory of free Banach spaces and linearisation of Lipschitz maps recently has become a prominent topic at the intersection of functional analysis and metric geometry. Thus, the reviewer believes that there is no particular need to introduce the definition of a free Banach space \(F(X)\) over a pointed metric space \((X,0)\) here. Vaguely speaking, the free spaces exhibit an \(L_1\)-like nature, partly due to the fact that they may be thought of as spaces of measures on \(X\) under a certain norm. Sometimes they are close to \(\ell_1\) and in some cases they may share the Schur property with that space. (A Banach space has the Schur property when weakly convergent sequences converge in the norm; \(\ell_1\)-sums of spaces with the Schur property still have this property.) The author proves that, if the free space \(F(X)\) over a proper metric space with some further rather mild property has the metric approximation property, then \(F(X)\) embeds into the \(\ell_1\)-sum of some finite-dimensional subspaces of \(F(X)\). In particular, \(F(X)\) has the Schur property. The extra condition in the above-mentioned theorem is too technical to be stated here, but let us remark that, by the results of \textit{A. Dalet} [Mediterr. J. Math. 12, No. 3, 973--986 (2015; Zbl 1342.46008)], countable proper metric spaces satisfy this condition and so do proper ultrametric spaces. The author then shows that, for a \(p\)-Banach space \((X, \|\cdot\|\)) (\(p\in (0,1)\)) with a finite-dimensional decomposition, the free space \(F(X, \|\cdot\|^p\)) has the Schur property. It is not known whether this can be extended to \(p\)-Banach spaces whose dual spaces separate points.