Tight span of subsets of the plane with the maximum metric (Q305732)

A metric space is \((X,d)\) hyperconvex, if for any collection \((x_{i})_{i\in I}\) of points in \(X\) and any collection \((r_{i})_{i\in I}\) of nonnegative real numbers satisfying \(d(x_{i},x_{j})\leq r_{i}+r_{j}\) for all \(i,j\in I\), the intersection of closed balls around \(x_{i}\) with radius \(r_{i}\) is nonempty: \(\bigcap\nolimits_{i\in I}\overline{B}(x_{i},r_{i})\neq \emptyset \). Let \(X \) be any metric space. Consider the set \(T(X)\) of functions \(f:X\rightarrow \mathbb{R}^{\geq 0}\) satisfying the following two properties: {\parindent=8mm \begin{itemize}\item[(i)] \(f(x)+f(y)\geq d(x,y),\) for all \(x,y\in X\). \item[(ii)] \(\inf_{y\in X}\left( f(x)+f(y)-d(x,y)\right) =0\), for all \(x\in X\). \end{itemize}} The tight span (or injective envelope) \(T(X)\) of \(X\) is obtained by putting the supremum metric \(d_{\infty }\) on the set \(T(X)\), as \(d_{\infty }(f,g)= {\sup }_{x\in X} \left| f(x)-g(x) \right| \). Recall that in the \(l_{\infty }\) plane, which will be denoted by \(\mathbb{R}_{\infty }^{2}\) (i.e. \((\mathbb{R}^{2},d_{\infty })\) with \(d_{\infty}((p_{1},p_{2}),\) \((q_{1},q_{2}))\) \(=\) \(\max \left\{ \left| p_{1}-q_{1}\right| ,\text{ }|p_{2}-q_{2}|\right\} \) ), between any two points \(p=(p_{1},p_{2})\) and \(q=(q_{1},q_{2})\) there exist paths whose length equal \(d_{\infty }(p,q)\). Such a path realizing the distance between the points \(p\) and \(q\) is called a geodesic if it is parameterized by arc length. A subspace \(X\subseteq \mathbb{R}_{\infty }^{2}\) is called geodesically convex if for any two points \(p,q\in X\), there exists a geodesic in \(\mathbb{R}_{\infty }^{2}\) which is contained in \(X\). The authors prove that a nonempty closed and geodesically convex subset of the \(l_{\infty }\) plane \(\mathbb{R}_{\infty }^{2}\) is hyperconvex and they characterize the tight spans of arbitrary subsets of \(\mathbb{R}_{\infty }^{2}\) via this property: Given any nonempty \(X\subseteq \mathbb{R}_{\infty }^{2}\), a closed, geodesically convex and minimal subset \(Y\subseteq \mathbb{R}_{\infty }^{2}\) containing \(X\) is isometric to the tight span \(T(X)\) of \(X\).