Continuity of Magnitude at Finite Subsets of $\ell_1^N$

Abstract

Magnitude is an isometric invariant of metric spaces introduced by Leinster in 2011. It is nowhere continuous on the Gromov--Hausdorff space of finite metric spaces, however, positive continuity results do exist if we restrict the ambient space. In this paper, we prove that magnitude is continuous at every finite subset $F$ of $\ell_1^N$. We do this by first deriving the weight measure for a finite union of cubes, i.e.\ cubical thickenings of the points in $F$, and then showing that these thickenings converge to the magnitude of the underlying finite set.