No label defined (Q4544322)

The author considers the problem of separation of sets by convex or affine functions on a paved structured segment space \(\Sigma=(S,\mathcal P,\mu)\), where \(S\) is a set, \(\mathcal P\) is a family of subsets of \(S\) and \(\mu:S\times S\times[0,1]\to S\) is a function such that \(\mu(a,b,1)=a\) and \(\mu(a,b,0)=b\) for all \(s,t\in S\). For a paved structured segment space \((S,\mathcal P,\mu)\) it is possible to define convex and compact sets as well as convex and affine functions: a subset \(C\) of \(S\) is convex if \(\mu(a,b,t)\in C\) for any \(a,b\in C\) and \(t\in[0,1]\); \(C\) is compact if for any family \(\mathcal E\subset\mathcal P\) of convex sets with \(C\cap(\bigcap\mathcal E)=\emptyset\) there is a finite subfamily \(\mathcal F\subset\mathcal E\) with \(C\bigcap(\cap\mathcal F)=\emptyset\). A function \(f:S\to\mathbb R\) is affine if \(f(\mu(a,b,t))=tf(a)+(1-t)f(b)\); \(f\) is continuous if \(f^{-1}(-\infty, a],f^{-1}[a,\infty)\in\mathcal P\) for any \(a\in\mathbb R\). Using von Neumann's minimax theorem the author proves several quite general theorems implying all known classical results concerning separation of sets by convex or affine functions. A typical result is Theorem 2.4 asserting that for compact convex sets \(Y,Z\subset S\), an absolutely convex family \(\mathcal F\) of continuous affine functions on \(S\) contains a function \(f\in\mathcal F\) with \(\inf_Yf>\sup_Zf\) iff for any \(y\in Y\), \(z\in Z\) there is \(f\in \mathcal F\) with \(f(y)\neq f(z)\). Besides classical separation theorems general results proved in the paper are applied to (Menger and Takahashi) convex metric spaces.