Geometry and structure of lipschitz-free spaces and their biduals

Resumen

Lipschitz-free spaces F(M) are canonical linearizations of arbitrary complete metric spaces M. More specifically, F(M) is the unique Banach space that contains an isometric copy of M that is linearly dense, and such that any Lipschitz mapping from M into some Banach space X extends to a bounded linear operator from F(M) into X. Those spaces are a very powerful tool for studies of the nonlinear geometry of Banach spaces, as they allow the application of well-known classical linear techniques to nonlinear problems. But this effort is only worthwhile if we have sufficient knowledge about the structure of F(M). The systematic study of Lipschitz-free spaces is rather recent and so the current understanding of their structure is still quite limited. This thesis is framed within the general program of studying the structure of general Lipschitz-free spaces. We start our study by developing some basic tools for the general theory of Lipschitz-free spaces. First we introduce weighting operators and use them to solve Weaver's conjecture that all normal functionals in the bidual F(M)** are weak* continuous. Next we prove the intersection theorem, which essentially says that the intersection of Lipschitz-free spaces is again a Lipschitz-free space. That result allows us to develop the concept of support of an element of F(M), analogous to the support of a measure. Furthermore, we extend the use of these tools to the bidual F(M)** and apply them to establish a decomposition of the bidual into spaces of functionals that are "concentrated at infinity" and "separated from infinity", respectively. With these tools at our disposal, we undertake the study of two particular aspects of Lipschitz-free spaces. First we analyze the relationship between F(M) and spaces of measures on M. In particular, we obtain characterizations of those elements of F(M) that can be represented as integration against a (not necessarily finite) Borel measure on M and vice versa, and we show that their supports agree. We also identify those metric spaces such that every element of F(M) can be represented by a Borel measure. This analysis is generalized to the bidual F(M)**, using measures on the uniform compactification of M in that case and obtaining similar results. We also derive some consequences for those elements of F(M) and F(M)** that can be expressed as the difference between two positive elements, such as the existence of an analog of the Jordan decomposition for measures. Secondly, we study the extremal structure of the unit ball of F(M) and provide some contributions to the general program of finding purely geometric characterizations of all of its extremal elements. Namely, we characterize all of its preserved extreme points, and its extreme and exposed points of finite support. We also give a full description of the extremal structure of the positive unit ball. The theory of supports developed previously plays a crucial role in the proofs of these results