English

Ultrametric skeletons

Metric Geometry 2015-06-18 v2 Functional Analysis Probability

Abstract

We prove that for every ϵ(0,1)\epsilon\in (0,1) there exists Cϵ(0,)C_\epsilon\in (0,\infty) with the following property. If (X,d)(X,d) is a compact metric space and μ\mu is a Borel probability measure on XX then there exists a compact subset SXS\subseteq X that embeds into an ultrametric space with distortion O(1/ϵ)O(1/\epsilon), and a probability measure ν\nu supported on SS satisfying ν(Bd(x,r))(μ(Bd(x,Cϵr))1ϵ\nu(B_d(x,r))\le (\mu(B_d(x,C_\epsilon r))^{1-\epsilon} for all xXx\in X and r(0,)r\in (0,\infty). The dependence of the distortion on ϵ\epsilon is sharp. We discuss an extension of this statement to multiple measures, as well as how it implies Talagrand's majorizing measures theorem.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1112.3416,
  title  = {Ultrametric skeletons},
  author = {Manor Mendel and Assaf Naor},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1112.3416},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

typos fixed

R2 v1 2026-06-21T19:51:36.527Z