Mutually nearest and farthest points of sets and the Drop Theorem in geodesic spaces

Abstract

Let A and X be nonempty, bounded and closed subsets of a geodesic metric space (E, d). The minimization (resp. maximization) problem denoted by min(A, X) (resp. max(A, X)) consists in finding (a0,x0)∈A×X(a0,x0)∈A×X such that d(a0,x0)=inf{d(a,x):a∈A,x∈X}d(a0,x0)=inf{d(a,x):a∈A,x∈X} (resp. d(a0,x0)=sup{d(a,x):a∈A,x∈X}d(a0,x0)=sup{d(a,x):a∈A,x∈X}). We give generic results on the well-posedness of these problems in different geodesic spaces and under different conditions considering the set A fixed. Besides, we analyze the situations when one set or both sets are compact and prove some specific results for CAT(0) spaces. We also prove a variant of the Drop Theorem in Busemann convex geodesic spaces and apply it to obtain an optimization result for convex functions.