A topological space is weakly contractible if all the homotopy groups are trivial.
It's connected if it's not the union of two disjoint nonempty open sets.
A metric space $(X,d)$ is uniquely geodesic if two points $x,y \in X$ are connected by a unique path of minimal length, precisely $d(x,y)$.
Question : Is a weakly contractible connected metric space, uniquely geodesic ?
In the case of a negative answer :
- What are the classical counter-examples ?
- Are there natural additive conditions for having an affirmative answer ?
The topological property of being weakly contractible does not say much about the metric.
The real line with the metric $d(x,y)=|x-y|^{1/2}$ is not geodesic; in fact it has no paths of finite length.
Pac-Man shape with the restriction metric from $\mathbb R^2$ gives another example: rectifiably connected, but not geodesic.
Yet another example: a non-strictly convex normed space such as $\ell_1$ or $\ell_\infty$. These are geodesic, but not uniquely geodesic.
A sufficient condition for being uniquely geodesic is the triangle comparison property dubbed $\mathrm{CAT}(0)$.