The asymptotic rank of metric spaces

Abstract

In this article we define and study a notion of asymptotic rank for metric spaces and show in our main theorem that for a large class of spaces, the asymptotic rank is characterized by the growth of the higher filling functions. For a proper, cocompact, simply-connected geodesic metric space of non-curvature in the sense of Alexandrov the asymptotic rank equals its Euclidean rank.