English

Self-contracted curves have finite length

Metric Geometry 2017-07-18 v1

Abstract

A curve θ\theta: IEI\to E in a metric space EE equipped with the distance dd, where IRI\subset \R is a (possibly unbounded) interval, is called self-contracted, if for any triple of instances of time {ti}i=13I\{t_i\}_{i=1}^3\subset I with t1t2t3t_1\leq t_2\leq t_3 one has d(θ(t3),θ(t2))d(θ(t3),θ(t1))d(\theta(t_3),\theta(t_2))\leq d(\theta(t_3),\theta(t_1)). We prove that if EE is a finite-dimensional normed space with an arbitrary norm, the trace of θ\theta is bounded, then θ\theta has finite length, i.e. is rectifiable, thus answering positively the question raised in~\cite{Lemenant16sc-rectif}.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1707.04922,
  title  = {Self-contracted curves have finite length},
  author = {Eugene Stepanov and Yana Teplitskaya},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1707.04922},
  year   = {2017}
}

Comments

27 pages

R2 v1 2026-06-22T20:48:23.220Z