In
functional analysis
Functional analysis is a branch of mathematical analysis, the core of which is formed by the study of vector spaces endowed with some kind of limit-related structure (e.g. inner product, norm, topology, etc.) and the linear functions defined o ...
, the girth of a
Banach space is the
infimum
In mathematics, the infimum (abbreviated inf; plural infima) of a subset S of a partially ordered set P is a greatest element in P that is less than or equal to each element of S, if such an element exists. Consequently, the term ''greatest lo ...
of lengths of
centrally symmetric
In geometry, a point reflection (point inversion, central inversion, or inversion through a point) is a type of isometry of Euclidean space. An object that is invariant under a point reflection is said to possess point symmetry; if it is invari ...
simple closed curve
In topology, the Jordan curve theorem asserts that every ''Jordan curve'' (a plane simple closed curve) divides the plane into an " interior" region bounded by the curve and an "exterior" region containing all of the nearby and far away exterior ...
s in the
unit sphere
In mathematics, a unit sphere is simply a sphere of radius one around a given center. More generally, it is the set of points of distance 1 from a fixed central point, where different norms can be used as general notions of "distance". A unit ...
of the space. Equivalently, it is twice the infimum of distances between opposite points of the sphere, as measured within the sphere.
[.][. See in particula]
p. 16
Every finite-dimensional Banach space has a pair of opposite points on the unit sphere that achieves the minimum distance, and a centrally symmetric simple closed curve that achieves the minimum length. However, such a curve may not always exist in infinite-dimensional spaces.
The girth is always at least four, because the shortest path on the unit sphere between two opposite points cannot be shorter than the length-two line segment connecting them through the origin of the space. A Banach space for which it is exactly four is said to be ''flat''. There exist flat Banach spaces of infinite dimension in which the girth is achieved by a minimum-length curve; an example is the space ''C''
,1of continuous functions from the
unit interval
In mathematics, the unit interval is the closed interval , that is, the set of all real numbers that are greater than or equal to 0 and less than or equal to 1. It is often denoted ' (capital letter ). In addition to its role in real analysis ...
to the
real number
In mathematics, a real number is a number that can be used to measure a ''continuous'' one-dimensional quantity such as a distance, duration or temperature. Here, ''continuous'' means that values can have arbitrarily small variations. Every ...
s, with the
sup norm
In mathematical analysis, the uniform norm (or ) assigns to real- or complex-valued bounded functions defined on a set the non-negative number
:\, f\, _\infty = \, f\, _ = \sup\left\.
This norm is also called the , the , the , or, when the ...
. The unit sphere of such a space has the counterintuitive property that certain pairs of opposite points have the same distance within the sphere that they do in the whole space.
The girth is a
continuous function on the
Banach–Mazur compactum, a space whose points correspond to the normed vector spaces of a given dimension.
The girth of the
dual space of a normed vector space is always equal to the girth of the original space.
[.]
See also
*
Systolic geometry
References
Banach spaces
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