Injective metric space

A metric space X is said to be hyperconvex if it is convex and its closed balls have the binary Helly property. That is,

1. any two points x and y can be connected by the isometric image of a line segment of length equal to the distance between the points (i.e. X is a path space), and
2. if F is any family of closed balls

${\displaystyle {\bar {B}}_{r}(p)=\{q\mid d(p,q)\leq r\}}$

such that each pair of balls in F meet, then there exists a point x common to all the balls in F.

Equivalently, if a set of points p_i and radii r_i > 0 satisfies r_i + r_j ≥ d(p_i,p_j) for each i and j, then there is a point q of the metric space that is within distance r_i of each p_i.

A retraction of a metric space X is a function ƒ mapping X to a subspace of itself, such that

1. for all x, ƒ(ƒ(x)) = ƒ(x); that is, ƒ is the identity function on its image (i. e. it is idempotent), and
2. for all x and y, d(ƒ(x), ƒ(y)) ≤ d(x, y); that is, ƒ is nonexpansive.

A retract of a space X is a subspace of X that is an image of a retraction. A metric space  X is said to be injective if, whenever X is isometric to a subspace Z of a space Y, that subspace Z is a retract of Y.

Examples of hyperconvex metric spaces include

• The real line
• Any vector space R^d with the L_∞ distance
• Manhattan distance (L₁) in the plane (which is equivalent up to rotation and scaling to the L_∞), but not in higher dimensions
• The tight span of a metric space
• Any real tree
• Aim(X) – see Metric space aimed at its subspace

Due to the equivalence between hyperconvexity and injectivity, these spaces are all also injective.

In an injective space, the radius of the minimum ball that contains any set S is equal to half the diameter of S. This follows since the balls of radius half the diameter, centered at the points of S, intersect pairwise and therefore by hyperconvexity have a common intersection; a ball of radius half the diameter centered at a point of this common intersection contains all of S. Thus, injective spaces satisfy a particularly strong form of Jung's theorem.

Every injective space is a complete space (Aronszajn & Panitchpakdi 1956), and every metric map (or, equivalently, nonexpansive mapping, or short map) on a bounded injective space has a fixed point (Sine 1979; (Soardi 1979)). A metric space is injective if and only if it is an injective object in the category of metric spaces and metric maps. For additional properties of injective spaces see Espínola & Khamsi (2001).

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• Chepoi, Victor (1997). "A T_X approach to some results on cuts and metrics". Advances in Applied Mathematics. 19 (4): 453–470. doi:10.1006/aama.1997.0549. MR 1479014.
• Espínola, R.; Khamsi, M. A. (2001). "Introduction to hyperconvex spaces" (PDF). In Kirk, W. A.; Sims B. (eds.). Handbook of Metric Fixed Point Theory. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. MR 1904284.
• Isbell, J. R. (1964). "Six theorems about injective metric spaces". Commentarii Mathematici Helvetici. 39: 65–76. doi:10.1007/BF02566944. MR 0182949.
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• Soardi, P. (1979). "Existence of fixed points of nonexpansive mappings in certain Banach lattices". Proceedings of the American Mathematical Society. 73 (1): 25–29. doi:10.2307/2042874. JSTOR 2042874. MR 0512051.