We show that if the Szlenk index of a Banach space X is larger than the first infinite ordinal ω or if the Szlenk index of its dual is larger than ω, then the tree of all finite sequences of integers equipped with the hyperbolic distance metrically embeds into X. We show that the converse is true when X is assumed to be reflexive. As an application, we exhibit new classes of Banach spaces that are stable under coarse-Lipschitz embeddings and therefore under uniform homeomorphisms.

The main goal of this paper is to provide an alternative proof of the following theorem of Petty: in a normed space of dimension at least three, every 3-element equilateral set can be extended to a 4-element equilateral set. Our approach is based on the result of Kramer and Németh about inscribing a simplex into a convex body. To prove the theorem of Petty, we shall also establish that for any three points in a normed plane, forming an equilateral triangle of side p, there exists a fourth point,...

Bourgain’s discretization theorem asserts that there exists a universal constant $C\in (0,\infty )$ with the following property. Let $X,Y$ be Banach spaces with $dimX=n$. Fix $D\in (1,\infty )$ and set $\delta =e^{-n^{Cn}}$. Assume that $𝒩$ is a $\delta$-net in the unit ball of $X$ and that $𝒩$ admits a bi-Lipschitz embedding into $Y$ with distortion at most $D$. Then the entire space $X$ admits a bi-Lipschitz embedding into $Y$ with distortion at most $CD$. This mostly expository article is devoted to a detailed presentation of a proof of Bourgain’s theorem.We also obtain an improvement...

Let A = (aij) ∊ Mn(ℝ) be an n by n symmetric stochastic matrix. For p ∊ [1, ∞) and a metric space (X, dX), let γ(A, dpx) be the infimum over those γ ∊ (0,∞] for which every x1, . . . , xn ∊ X satisfy [...] Thus γ (A, dpx) measures the magnitude of the nonlinear spectral gap of the matrix A with respect to the kernel dpX : X × X →[0,∞). We study pairs of metric spaces (X, dX) and (Y, dY ) for which there exists Ψ: (0,∞)→(0,∞) such that γ (A, dpX) ≤Ψ (A, dpY ) for every symmetric stochastic A ∊ Mn(ℝ)...

Diversities are like metric spaces, except that every finite subset, instead of just every pair of points, is assigned a value. Just as there is a theory of minimal distortion embeddings of fiite metric spaces into L1, there is a similar, yet undeveloped, theory for embedding finite diversities into the diversity analogue of L1 spaces. In the metric case, it iswell known that an n-point metric space can be embedded into L1 withO(log n) distortion. For diversities, the optimal distortion is unknown....

We give conditions on Gromov-Hausdorff convergent inverse systems of metric measure graphs which imply that the measured Gromov-Hausdorff limit (equivalently, the inverse limit) is a PI space i.e., it satisfies a doubling condition and a Poincaré inequality in the sense of Heinonen-Koskela [12]. The Poincaré inequality is actually of type (1, 1). We also give a systematic construction of examples for which our conditions are satisfied. Included are known examples of PI spaces, such as Laakso spaces,...

We consider the problem of isometric embedding of metric spaces into Banach spaces, and introduce and study the remarkable class of so-called linearly rigid metric spaces: these are the spaces that admit a unique, up to isometry, linearly dense isometric embedding into a Banach space. The first nontrivial example of such a space was given by R. Holmes; he proved that the universal Urysohn space has this property. We give a criterion of linear rigidity of a metric space, which allows us to give a...

It is shown that a Banach space admits an equivalent norm whose modulus of uniform convexity has power-type $p$ if and only if it is Markov $p$-convex. Counterexamples are constructed to natural questions related to isomorphic uniform convexity of metric spaces, showing in particular that tree metrics fail to have the dichotomy property.

We show that superreflexivity can be characterized in terms of bilipschitz embeddability of word hyperbolic groups.We compare characterizations of superrefiexivity in terms of diamond graphs and binary trees.We show that there exist sequences of series-parallel graphs of increasing topological complexitywhich admit uniformly bilipschitz embeddings into a Hilbert space, and thus do not characterize superrefiexivity.

We show that a geodesic metric space which does not admit bilipschitz embeddings into Banach spaces with the Radon-Nikodým property does not necessarily contain a bilipschitz image of a thick family of geodesics. This is done by showing that no thick family of geodesics is Markov convex, and comparing this result with results of Cheeger-Kleiner, Lee-Naor, and Li. The result contrasts with the earlier result of the author that any Banach space without the Radon-Nikodým property contains a bilipschitz...

Given a Banach space X, for n ∈ ℕ and p ∈ (1,∞) we investigate the smallest constant ∈ (0,∞) for which every n-tuple of functions f₁,...,fₙ: -1,1ⁿ → X satisfies ${\int }_{-1,1ⁿ}\left|\right|{\sum }_{j=1}^n{\partial }_j{f}_j{\left(\epsilon \right)\left|\right|}^{p}d\mu \left(\epsilon \right){\le }^p{\int }_{-1,1ⁿ}{\int }_{-1,1ⁿ}\left|\right|{\sum }_{j=1}^n{\delta }_j\Delta f_j\left(\epsilon \right){\left|\right|}^{p}d\mu \left(\epsilon \right)d\mu \left(\delta \right)$, where μ is the uniform probability measure on the discrete hypercube -1,1ⁿ, and ${{\partial }_j}_{j=1}^n$ and $\Delta ={\sum }_{j=1}^n{\partial }_j$ are the hypercube partial derivatives and the hypercube Laplacian, respectively. Denoting this constant by ${ⁿ}_p\left(X\right)$, we show that ${ⁿ}_p\left(X\right)\le {\sum }_{k=1}^{n}1/k$ for every Banach space (X,||·||). This extends the classical Pisier inequality, which corresponds to the special case $f_j={\Delta }^{-1}{\partial }_{j}f$ for...

We show that there are well separated families of quantum expanders with asymptotically the maximal cardinality allowed by a known upper bound. This has applications to the “growth" of certain operator spaces: It implies asymptotically sharp estimates for the growth of the multiplicity of $M_N$-spaces needed to represent (up to a constant $C>1$) the $M_N$-version of the $n$-dimensional operator Hilbert space $O{H}_n$ as a direct sum of copies of $M_N$. We show that, when $C$ is close to 1, this multiplicity grows as $exp\beta n{N}^2$ for...

The metric Markov cotype of barycentric metric spaces is computed, yielding the first class of metric spaces that are not Banach spaces for which this bi-Lipschitz invariant is understood. It is shown that this leads to new nonlinear spectral calculus inequalities, as well as a unified framework for Lipschitz extension, including new Lipschitz extension results for CAT (0) targets. An example that elucidates the relation between metric Markov cotype and Rademacher cotype is analyzed, showing that...

We introduce the notions of almost Lipschitz embeddability and nearly isometric embeddability. We prove that for p ∈ [1,∞], every proper subset of Lp is almost Lipschitzly embeddable into a Banach space X if and only if X contains uniformly the ℓpn’s. We also sharpen a result of N. Kalton by showing that every stable metric space is nearly isometrically embeddable in the class of reflexive Banach spaces.