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BICS Bath Institute for Complex Systems An Asymmetric Arzel`a-Ascoli Theorem Julia Collins and Johannes Zimmer Bath Institute For Complex Systems Preprint 16/05 (2005) http://www.bath.ac.uk/math-sci/BICS An Asymmetric Arzel`a-Ascoli Theorem Julia Collins and Johannes Zimmer November 11, 2005 Abstract An Arzel`a-Ascoli theorem for asymmetric metric spaces (sometimes called quasi-metric spaces) is proved. One genuinely asymmetric condition is introduced, and it is shown that several classic statements fail in the asymmetric context if this assumption is dropped. Key words: Quasimetric, Arzel`a-Ascoli 2000 Mathematics Subject Classification: 26A15 1 Introduction In this paper we investigate the question of whether the classical theorem of Arzel`a-Ascoli can be generalised to the world of asymmetric metric spaces. Asymmetric metric spaces are defined as metric spaces, but without the requirement that the (asymmetric) metric d has to satisfy d(x, y) = d(y, x). The investigations show that both the Arzel`a-Ascoli Theorem as well as underlying fundamental statements of real analysis rely heavily on the symmetry. Without symmetry, an ‘embarrassing richness of material’ [11] is revealed, which we try to shed light on by discussing various examples. In particular, it is shown that classic statements of real (symmetric) analysis fail if one crucial asymmetric assumption fails. Moving away from pure mathematics into the realms of applied maths and materials science, we find many recent applications of asymmetric metric spaces; for example, in plasticity