Realizations of Gromov-Hausdorff Distance

Abstract: It is shown that for any two compact metric spaces there exists an "optimal" correspondence which the Gromov-Hausdorff distance is attained at. Each such correspondence generates isometric embeddings of these spaces into a compact metric space such that the Gromov-Hausdorff distance between the initial spaces is equal to the Hausdorff distance between their images. Also, the optimal correspondences could be used for constructing the shortest curves in the Gromov-Hausdorff space in exactly the same way as it was done by Alexander Ivanov, Nadezhda Nikolaeva, and Alexey Tuzhilin in arXiv:1504.03830, where it is proved that the Gromov-Hausdorff space is geodesic. Notice that all proofs in the present paper are elementary and use no more than the idea of compactness.