Maximal equilateral sets

Abstract

A subset of a normed space $X$ is called equilateral if the distance between any two points is the same. Let $m(X)$ be the smallest possible size of an equilateral subset of $X$ maximal with respect to inclusion. We first observe that Petty's construction of a $d$-dimensional $X$ of any finite dimension $d\geq 4$ with $m(X)=4$ can be generalised to give $m(X\oplus_1\mathbb{R})=4$ for any $X$ of dimension at least 2 which has a smooth point on its unit sphere. By a construction involving Hadamard matrices we then show that for any set $\Gamma$, $m(\ell_p(\Gamma))$ is finite and bounded above by a function of $p$, for all $1\leq p<2$. Also, for all $p\in[1,\infty)$ and $d\in\mathbb{N}$ there exists $c=c(p,d)>1$ such that $m(X)\leq d+1$ for all $d$-dimensional $X$ with Banach-Mazur distance less than $c$ from $\ell_p^d$. Using Brouwer's fixed-point theorem we show that $m(X)\leq d+1$ for all $d$-dimensional $X$ with Banach-Mazur distance less than 3/2 from $\ell_\infty^d$. A graph-theoretical argument furthermore shows that $m(\ell_\infty^d)=d+1$. The above results lead us to conjecture that $m(X)\leq 1+\dim X$ for all finite-dimensional normed spaces $X$.