A "hidden" characterization of approximatively polyhedral convex sets in Banach spaces

TL;DR

This paper characterizes approximatively polyhedral convex sets in Banach spaces using properties of their metric components in the space of convex subsets, linking geometric approximation with topological and metric conditions.

Contribution

It provides a new characterization of approximatively polyhedral convex sets via separability, density, and the absence of positively hiding sets in the Hausdorff metric space.

Findings

Equivalence of approximation and topological conditions in Banach spaces.

In finite-dimensional spaces, additional geometric conditions are equivalent.

Identification of positively hiding sets as obstructions to approximability.

Abstract

For a Banach space $X$ by $Conv_H(X)$ we denote the space of non-empty closed convex subsets of $X$, endowed with the Hausdorff metric. We prove that for any closed convex set $C\subset X$ and its metric component $H_C=\{A\in Conv_H(X):d_H(A,C)<\infty\}$ in $Conv_H(X)$, the following conditions are equivalent: (1) $C$ is approximatively polyhedral, which means that for every $\epsilon>0$ there is a polyhedral convex subset $P\subset X$ on Hausdorff distance $d_H(P,C)<\epsilon$ from $C$; (2) $C$ lies on finite Hausdorff distance $d_H(C,P)$ from some polyhedral convex set $P\subset X$; (3) the metric space $(H_C,d_H)$ is separable; (4) $H_C$ has density $dens(H_C)<\mathfrak c$; (5) $H_C$ does not contain a positively hiding convex set $P\subset X$. If the Banach space $X$ is finite-dimensional, then the conditions (1)--(5) are equivalent to: (6) $C$ is not positively hiding; (7) $C$ is not infinitely hiding. A convex subset $C\subset X$ is called {\em positively hiding} (resp. {\em infinitely hiding}) if there is an infinite set $A\subset X\setminus C$ such that $\inf_{a\in A}dist(a,C)>0$ (resp. $\sup_{a\in A}dist(a,C)=\infty$) and for any distinct points $a,b\in A$ the segment $[a,b]$ meets the set $C$.