Orthogonal sequences and regularity of embeddings into finite-dimensional spaces

This paper focuses on the regularity of linear embeddings of finite-dimensional subsets of Hilbert and Banach spaces into Euclidean spaces. We study orthogonal sequences in a Hilbert space H, whose elements tend to zero, and similar sequences in the space c 0 of null sequences. The examples studied show that the results due to Hunt and Kaloshin (Regularity of embeddings of infinite-dimensional fractal sets into finite-dimensional spaces, Nonlinearity 12 (1999) 1263–1275) and Robinson (Linear embeddings of finite-dimensional subsets of Banach spaces into Euclidean spaces, Nonlinearity 22 (2009) 711–728) for subsets of Hilbert and Banach spaces with finite box-counting dimension are asymptotically sharp. An analogous argument allows us to obtain a lower bound for the power of the logarithmic correction term in an embedding theorem proved by Olson and Robinson (Almost bi-Lipschitz embeddings and almost homogeneous sets, Trans. Amer. Math. Soc. 362 (1) (2010) 145–168) for subsets X of Hilbert spaces when X − X has finite Assouad dimension.