Not every metric is induced from a norm

Question

I have studied that every normed space $(V, \lVert\cdot \lVert)$ is a metric space with respect to distance function

$d(u,v) = \lVert u - v \rVert$, $u,v \in V$.

My question is whether every metric on a linear space can be induced by norm? I know answer is no but I need proper justification.

Edit: Is there any method to check whether a given metric space is induced by norm ?

Thanks for help

Answer 1

Let $V$ be a vector space over the field $\mathbb{F}$. A norm $$\| \cdot \|: V \longrightarrow \mathbb{F}$$ on $V$ satisfies the homogeneity condition $$\|ax\| = |a| \cdot \|x\|$$ for all $a \in \mathbb{F}$ and $x \in V$. So the metric $$d: V \times V \longrightarrow \mathbb{F},$$ $$d(x,y) = \|x - y\|$$ defined by the norm is such that $$d(ax,ay) = \|ax - ay\| = |a| \cdot \|x - y\| = |a| d(x,y)$$ for all $a \in \mathbb{F}$ and $x,y \in V$. This property is not satisfied by general metrics. For example, let $\delta$ be the discrete metric $$\delta(x,y) = \begin{cases} 1, & x \neq y, \\ 0, & x = y. \end{cases}$$ Then $\delta$ clearly does not satisfy the homogeneity property of the a metric induced by a norm.

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To answer your edit, call a metric $$d: V \times V \longrightarrow \mathbb{F}$$ homogeneous if $$d(ax, ay) = |a| d(x,y)$$ for all $a \in \mathbb{F}$ and $x,y \in V$, and translation invariant if $$d(x + z, y + z) = d(x,y)$$ for all $x, y, z \in V$. Then a homogeneous, translation invariant metric $d$ can be used to define a norm $\| \cdot \|$ by $$\|x\| = d(x,0)$$ for all $x \in V$.

Answer 2

As Henry states above, metrics induced by a norm must be homogeneous. You can see that they must also be translation invariant: $d(x+a,y+a)= d(x,y).$ So any metric not satisfying either of those can not come from a norm.

On the other hand, it turns out that these two conditions on the metric are sufficient to define a norm that induces that metric: $d(x,0)=\| x \|.$

Answer 3

Here is another interesting example: Let $|x-y|$ denote the usual Euclidean distance between two real numbers $x$ and $y$. Let $d(x,y)=\min\{|x-y|,1\}$, the standard derived bounded metric. Now suppose we look at $\Bbb{R}$ as a vector space over itself and ask whether $d$ comes from any norm on $\Bbb{R}$. Then if there is such a norm say $||.||$, we must have the homogeneity condition: for any $\alpha \in \Bbb{R}$ and any $v \in \Bbb{R}$,

$$||\alpha v || = |\alpha| ||v||.$$

But now we have a problem: The metric $d$ is obviously bounded by $1$, but we can take $\alpha$ arbitrarily large so that $||.||$ is unbounded. It follows that $d$ does not come from any norm.