The Gromov-Hausdorff distance is a metric used to measure the similarity between two metric spaces, providing a way to compare their geometric structures. Given two metric spaces and , the Gromov-Hausdorff distance is defined as the infimum of the Hausdorff distances of all possible isometric embeddings of the spaces into a common metric space. This means that one can consider how closely the two spaces can be made to overlap when placed in a larger context, allowing for a flexible comparison that accounts for differences in scale and shape.
Mathematically, if is a metric space where both and can be embedded isometrically, the Gromov-Hausdorff distance is given by:
where is the Hausdorff distance between the images of and in . This concept is particularly useful in areas such as geometric group theory, shape analysis, and the study of metric spaces in various branches of mathematics.
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