# Examples and applications of the density of strongly norm attaining Lipschitz maps

## TL;DR

This paper investigates the density of strongly norm attaining Lipschitz maps, providing new examples, counterexamples, and applications that deepen understanding of their structure and implications in metric and Banach space theory.

## Contribution

It introduces novel examples and counterexamples of metric spaces regarding the density of strongly norm attaining Lipschitz maps, and explores their implications for Lipschitz-free spaces.

## Key findings

- $ ext{SNA}( ext{unit circle},Y)$ is not dense in ${ ext{Lip}}_0( ext{unit circle},Y)$ for any Banach space $Y$
- Constructed metric spaces where $ ext{SNA}(M,Y)$ is dense despite containing an isometric copy of $[0,1]$
- Proved that under certain conditions, the unit ball of the Lipschitz-free space is the closed convex hull of its strongly exposed points.

## Abstract

We study the density of the set $\operatorname{SNA}(M,Y)$ of those Lipschitz maps from a (complete pointed) metric space $M$ to a Banach space $Y$ which strongly attain their norm (i.e.\ the supremum defining the Lipschitz norm is actually a maximum). We present new and somehow counterintuitive examples, and we give some applications. First, we show that $\operatorname{SNA}(\mathbb T,Y)$ is not dense in ${\mathrm{Lip}}_0(\mathbb T,Y)$ for any Banach space $Y$, where $\mathbb T$ denotes the unit circle in the Euclidean plane. This provides the first example of a Gromov concave metric space (i.e.\ every molecule is a strongly exposed point of the unit ball of the Lipschitz-free space) for which the density does not hold. Next, we construct metric spaces $M$ satisfying that $\operatorname{SNA}(M,Y)$ is dense in ${\mathrm{Lip}}_0(M,Y)$ regardless $Y$ but which contains an isometric copy of $[0,1]$ and so the Lipschitz-free space $\mathcal F(M)$ fails the Radon--Nikod\'{y}m property, answering in the negative a posed question. Furthermore, an example $M$ can be produced failing all the previously known sufficient conditions to get the density of strongly norm attaining Lipschitz maps. Finally, among other applications, we prove that given a compact metric $M$ which does not contains any isometric copy of $[0,1]$ and a Banach space $Y$, if $\operatorname{SNA}(M,Y)$ is dense, then $\operatorname{SNA}(M,Y)$ actually contains an open dense subset and $B_{\mathcal F(M)}=\overline{{\mathrm{co}}}(\operatorname{str-exp}(B_{\mathcal F(M)}))$. Further, we show that if $M$ is a boundedly compact metric space for which $\operatorname{SNA}(M,\mathbb R)$ is dense in ${\mathrm{Lip}}_0(M,\mathbb R)$, then the unit ball of the Lipschitz-free space on $M$ is the closed convex hull of its strongly exposed points.