A characterization of normed spaces among metric spaces (Q627388)

In [\textit{T. Oikhberg} and \textit{H. P. Rosenthal}, Rocky Mt. J. Math. 37, No. 2, 597--608 (2007; Zbl 1138.46006)] it was proved that if \(X\) is a real linear space equipped with a metric \(d\) that satisfies the following three conditions: (i) the metric \(d\) is translation invariant, that is, \(d(x+z,y+z)=d(x,y)\) for any \(x\), \(y\), \(z\in X\), (ii) for every \(x\in X\) the map from \([0,1]\) to \(X\) defined by \(t\mapsto tx\) is continuous, (iii) each one-dimensional affine subspace of \(X\) is isometric to \(\mathbb{R}\), then there exists a norm \(\left\| \, \cdot \, \right\|\) on \(X\) such that \(d(x,y)=\left\| x-y\right\| \), where \(x,y\in X\). In the paper under review the following extension of the preceding result is stated (see Theorem 1.2): Let \(X\) be a real linear space equipped with a metric \(d\) satisfying: (i) the metric \(d\) is translation invariant, that is \(d(x+z,y+z)=d(x,y)\) for any \(x\), \(y\), \(z\in X\), (ii') for every \(x\in X\) the set \(\left\{ tx:t\in [ 0,1]\right\} \) is bounded in \((X,d)\), (iii') for all \(x\), \(y\in X\) their algebraic midpoint (i.e., \((x+y)/2\)) is a metric midpoint (i.e., \(d(x,y)=2d(x,(x+y)/2)=2d(y,(x+y)/2)\)), then \(\left\| x\right\| :=d(x,0)\), \(x\in X\), is a norm on \(X\) and \( d(x,y)=\left\| x-y\right\| \), \(x\), \(y\), \(z\in X\). The proof of the theorem of Oikhberg and Rosenthal is based on the use of the Mazur-Ulam theorem and the proof of the above Theorem 1.2 is shorter and self-contained. Furthermore, in Proposition 1.1, the authors show that (iii) implies (iii'), but that the converse is not true.