Real tree

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A real tree or R-tree is a metric space (M,d) such that for any x, y in M there is a unique arc from x to y, i.e., a continuous map f from an interval [a,b] to M such that f(a)=x and f(b)=y, and this arc is an isometric embedding. Real trees are injective metric spaces.

There is a theory of group actions on R-trees, which is part of geometric group theory.

[edit] Simplicial R-trees

A simplicial R-tree is an R-tree that is free from certain "topological strangeness". More precisely, a point x in an R-tree T is called ordinary if T−x has two components. The points which are not ordinary are singular. We define a simplicial R-tree to be an R-tree whose set of singular points is discrete and closed.

[edit] Examples

Each discrete tree can be regarded as an R-tree by a simple construction such that neighboring vertices have distance one.
The Paris metric makes the plane into an R-tree. If two points are on the same ray in the plane, their distance is defined as the Euclidean distance. Otherwise, their distance is defined to be the sum of the Euclidian distances of these two points to the origin.
The R obtained in the following way is nonsimplicial. Start with the interval [0,2] and glue, for each positive integer n, an interval of length 1/n to the point 1−1/n in the original interval. The set of singular points is discrete, but fails to be closed since 1 is an ordinary point in this R-tree. Gluing an interval to 1 would result in a closed set of singular points at the expense of discreteness.