Carathéodory metric


In mathematics, the Carathéodory metric is a metric defined on the open unit ball of a complex Banach space that has many similar properties to the Poincaré metric of hyperbolic geometry. It is named after the Greek mathematician Constantin Carathéodory.

Definition

Let be a complex Banach space and let B be the open unit ball in X. Let Δ denote the open unit disc in the complex plane C, thought of as the Poincaré disc model for 2-dimensional real/1-dimensional complex hyperbolic geometry. Let the Poincaré metric ρ on Δ be given by
. Then the Carathéodory metric d on B is defined by
What it means for a function on a Banach space to be holomorphic is defined in the article on Infinite dimensional holomorphy.

Properties

There is an associated notion of Carathéodory length for tangent vectors to the ball B. Let x be a point of B and let v be a tangent vector to B at x; since B is the open unit ball in the vector space X, the tangent space TxB can be identified with X in a natural way, and v can be thought of as an element of X. Then the Carathéodory length of v at x, denoted α, is defined by
One can show that α ≥ ||v||, with equality when x = 0.