Flats in Spaces with Convex Geodesic Bicombings

Abstract

In spaces of nonpositive curvature the existence of isometrically embedded flat (hyper)planes is often granted by apparently weaker conditions on large scales.We show that some such results remain valid for metric spaces with non-unique geodesic segments under suitable convexity assumptions on the distance function along distinguished geodesics. The discussion includes, among other things, the Flat Torus Theorem and Gromov’s hyperbolicity criterion referring to embedded planes. This generalizes results of Bowditch for Busemann spaces