Measures under the flat norm as ordered normed vector space

Abstract

The space of real Borel measures \(\mathcal {M}(S)\) on a metric space S under the flat norm (dual bounded Lipschitz norm), ordered by the cone \(\mathcal {M}_+(S)\) of nonnegative measures, is considered from an ordered normed vector space perspective in order to apply the well-developed theory of this area. The flat norm is considered in place of the variation norm because subsets of \(\mathcal {M}_+(S)\) are compact and semiflows on \(\mathcal {M}_+(S)\) are continuous under much weaker conditions. In turn, the flat norm offers new challenges because \(\mathcal {M}(S)\) is rarely complete and \(\mathcal {M}_+(S)\) is only complete if S is complete. As illustrations serve the eigenvalue problem for bounded additive and order-preserving homogeneous maps on \(\mathcal {M}_+(S)\) and continuous semiflows. Both topics prepare for a dynamical systems theory on \(\mathcal {M}_+(S)\).