English

On universal-homogeneous hyperbolic graphs and spaces and their isometry groups

Metric Geometry 2026-01-19 v2 Logic

Abstract

The Urysohn space is the unique separable metric space that is universal and homogeneous for finite metric spaces, i.e., it embeds any finite metric space any isometry between finite subspaces extends to an isometry of the whole space. We here consider the existence of a universal-homogeneous hyperbolic space. We show that for δ>0\delta>0 there is no δ\delta-hyperbolic space which is universal and homogeneous in the above sense for all finite δ\delta-hpyerbolic spaces. We then show that for any δ0\delta\geq 0 and any countable class C\mathcal{C} of δ\delta-hyperbolic spaces with countably many distinguished δ\delta-closed subspaces there exists a δ\delta-hyperbolic metric space HC\mathbb{H}_\mathcal{C} such that every XCX\in \mathcal{C} can be embedded into HC\mathbb{H}_\mathcal{C} as a δ\delta-closed subspace and any isometry between distinguished δ\delta-closed subspaces extends to an isometry of HC\mathbb{H}_\mathcal{C}. If C\mathcal{C} consists of δ\delta-hyperbolic geodesic spaces, then HC\mathbb{H}_\mathcal{C} contains the quasi-tree of spaces as defined by Bestvina et al.. For Cδ\mathcal{C}_\delta the class of all finite δ\delta-hyperbolic spaces with rational distances or the class of finite δ\delta-hyperbolic graphs, the limit Hδ\mathbb{H}_\delta is a δ\delta-hyperbolic space (or graph, respectively) universal for all finite δ\delta-hyperbolic spaces with rational distances (or finite δ\delta-hyperbolic graphs) and such that any isometry between δ\delta-closed subspaces extends to an isometry of Hδ\mathbb{H}_\delta. We show that the isometry group of Hδ\mathbb{H}_\delta does not contain elements of bounded displacement and has no dense conjugacy class.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2502.14813,
  title  = {On universal-homogeneous hyperbolic graphs and spaces and their isometry groups},
  author = {Katrin Tent},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2502.14813},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

to appear in Bull. London Math. Soc

R2 v1 2026-06-28T21:51:46.059Z