The hyperbolic dimension of metric spaces

Abstract

We introduce a new quasi-isometry invariant of metric spaces called the hyperbolic dimension, hypdim, which is a version of the Gromov's asymptotic dimension, asdim. The hyperbolic dimension is at most the asymptotic dimension, however, unlike the asymptotic dimension, the hyperbolic dimension of any Euclidean space R^n is zero (while asdim R^n=n.) This invariant possesses usual properties of dimension like monotonicity and product theorems. Our main result says that the hyperbolic dimension of any Gromov hyperbolic space X (with mild restrictions) is at least the topological dimension of the boundary at infinity plus 1. As an application we obtain that there is no quasi-isometric embedding of the real hyperbolic space H^n into the (n-1)-fold metric product of metric trees stabilized by any Euclidean factor.