$\varepsilon$-isometries without isometric embeddings

Abstract

We show that there exist two separable real Banach spaces $X$ and $Y$ such that, for every $\varepsilon>0$, there is a standard exact $\varepsilon$-isometry $f_\varepsilon: X\to Y$ whose distortion of every distance is between $0$ and $\varepsilon$, whereas no isometric embedding of $X$ into $Y$ exists, even without a linearity assumption. This gives a negative answer to \cite[Problem 1 and Problem 2]{cheng4} of Cheng and Zhou. The construction combines a snowflaked Lipschitz-free space with the Schur-property theorem of Kalton and the isometric linearization theorem of Godefroy and Kalton.