Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 October 2015
A direct application of Zorn’s lemma gives that every Lipschitz map $f:X\subset \mathbb{Q}_{p}^{n}\rightarrow \mathbb{Q}_{p}^{\ell }$ has an extension to a Lipschitz map $\widetilde{f}:\mathbb{Q}_{p}^{n}\rightarrow \mathbb{Q}_{p}^{\ell }$. This is analogous to, but easier than, Kirszbraun’s theorem about the existence of Lipschitz extensions of Lipschitz maps $S\subset \mathbb{R}^{n}\rightarrow \mathbb{R}^{\ell }$. Recently, Fischer and Aschenbrenner obtained a definable version of Kirszbraun’s theorem. In this paper, we prove in the $p$-adic context that $\widetilde{f}$ can be taken definable when $f$ is definable, where definable means semi-algebraic or subanalytic (or some intermediary notion). We proceed by proving the existence of definable Lipschitz retractions of $\mathbb{Q}_{p}^{n}$ to the topological closure of $X$ when $X$ is definable.