A universal differentiability set in Banach spaces with separable dual (Q639532)

The differentiability properties of Lipschitz functions have been the subject of intense investigation, starting with the classical results of Rademacher on a.e.-differentiability of Lipschitz functions defined on finite dimensional normed spaces and Zahorski on the behaviour of the differentiability sets of Lipschitz functions on \(\mathbb R\), and continuing with the remarkable result of \textit{D. Preiss} [``Differentiability of Lipschitz functions on Banach spaces'', J. Funct. Anal. 91, No.~2, 312--345 (1990; Zbl 0711.46036)] on dense differentiability of Lipschitz functions on Asplund spaces. They are still in the focus of current research, being deeply related to the geometric properties of the underlying Banach spaces. The authors of the present paper started a program investigating the existence of small universal differentiability sets (UDS) in Banach spaces (finite or infinite dimensional). A UDS is a subset \(S\) of a Banach space \(X\) such that every Lipschitz function on \(X\) is Fréchet differentiable at some point in \(S\). The main result of the paper asserts that every separable Asplund space (or equivalently, every Banach space with separable dual) contains a closed, bounded UDS \(S\) of Hausdorff dimension one. The set \(S\) can be chosen further to be totally disconnected. Also, dimension one is optimal in the sense that every UDS has Hausdorff dimension at least one. If the Banach space \(X\) is non-separable, then every set \(S\) of Hausdorff dimension one is contained in a separable subspace \(Y'\) of \(X\) and the function \(\text{dist}(\cdot,Y')\) is Lipschitz and nowhere differentiable on \(S\). Similarly, a compact subset \(S\) of an infinite dimensional Banach space cannot be a UDS because the Lipschitz mapping \(\text{dist}(\cdot,\text{conv}(S))\) is nowhere differentiable on \(S\). Other cases (a good presentation is given in the introduction to the paper), as, e.g., the existence of UDS in finite dimensional Banach spaces, are investigated by the authors in other papers which are in print, some of them being available as preprints on the \texttt{arXiv} web site.