Extremal subsets in geodesically complete spaces with curvature bounded above

Abstract

We introduce the notion of an extremal subset in a geodesically complete space with curvature bounded above, i.e., a GCBA space. This is an analogue of an extremal subset in an Alexandrov space with curvature bounded below introduced by Perelman and Petrunin. We prove that under an additional assumption the set of topological singularities in a GCBA space forms an extremal subset. We also exhibit some structural properties of extremal subsets in GCBA spaces.