We prove that every separable Banach space containing an isomorphic copy of $\ell _{1}$ can be equivalently renormed so that the new bidual norm is octahedral. This answers, in the separable case, a question in Godefroy [Metric characterization of first Baire class linear forms and octahedral norms, Studia Math. 95 (1989), 1–15]. As a direct consequence, we obtain that every dual Banach space, with a separable predual and failing to be strongly regular, can be equivalently renormed with a dual norm to satisfy the strong diameter two property.

We prove that if $M$ is a $\text{JBW}^{\ast }$-triple and not a Cartan factor of rank two, then $M$ satisfies the Mazur–Ulam property, that is, every surjective isometry from the unit sphere of $M$ onto the unit sphere of another real Banach space $Y$ extends to a surjective real linear isometry from $M$ onto $Y$.

Let ${\mathcal{D}}$ be a Schauder decomposition on some Banach space $X$. We prove that if ${\mathcal{D}}$ is not $R$-Schauder, then there exists a Ritt operator $T\in B(X)$ which is a multiplier with respect to ${\mathcal{D}}$ such that the set $\{T^{n}:n\geq 0\}$ is not $R$-bounded. Likewise, we prove that there exists a bounded sectorial operator $A$ of type $0$ on $X$ which is a multiplier with respect to ${\mathcal{D}}$ such that the set $\{e^{-tA}:t\geq 0\}$ is not $R$-bounded.

We show that if $(X,\Vert \cdot \Vert )$ is a Banach space that admits an equivalent locally uniformly rotund norm and the set of all norm-attaining functionals is residual then the dual norm $\Vert \cdot \Vert ^{\ast }$ on $X^{\ast }$ is Fréchet at the points of a dense subset of $X^{\ast }$. This answers the main open problem in a paper by Guirao, Montesinos and Zizler [‘Remarks on the set of norm-attaining functionals and differentiability’, Studia Math.241 (2018), 71–86].

These notes concern the nonlinear geometry of Banach spaces, asymptotic uniform smoothness and several Banach–Saks-like properties. We study the existence of certain concentration inequalities in asymptotically uniformly smooth Banach spaces as well as weakly sequentially continuous coarse (Lipschitz) embeddings into those spaces. Some results concerning the descriptive set theoretical complexity of those properties are also obtained. We finish the paper with a list of open problem.

By previous work of Giordano and the author, ergodic actions of $\mathbf{Z}$ (and other discrete groups) are completely classified measure-theoretically by their dimension space, a construction analogous to the dimension group used in $\text{C}^{\ast }$-algebras and topological dynamics. Here we investigate how far from approximately transitive (AT) actions can be that derive from circulant (and related) matrices. It turns out not very: although non-AT actions can arise from this method of construction, under very modest additional conditions, approximate transitivity arises. KIn addition, if we drop the positivity requirement in the isomorphism of dimension spaces, then all these ergodic actions satisfy an analogue of AT. Many examples are provided.

We show that for a bounded subset $A$ of the $L_{1}(\unicode[STIX]{x1D707})$ space with finite measure $\unicode[STIX]{x1D707}$, the measure of weak noncompactness of $A$ based on the convex separation of sequences coincides with the measure of deviation from the Banach–Saks property expressed by the arithmetic separation of sequences. A similar result holds for a related quantity with the alternating signs Banach–Saks property. The results provide a geometric and quantitative extension of Szlenk’s theorem saying that every weakly convergent sequence in the Lebesgue space $L_{1}$ has a subsequence whose arithmetic means are norm convergent.

We study linear mappings which preserve vectors at a specific angle. We introduce the concept of $(\unicode[STIX]{x1D700},c)$-angle preserving mappings and define $\widehat{\unicode[STIX]{x1D700}}\,(T,c)$ as the ‘smallest’ number $\unicode[STIX]{x1D700}$ for which $T$ is an $(\unicode[STIX]{x1D700},c)$-angle preserving mapping. We derive an exact formula for $\widehat{\unicode[STIX]{x1D700}}\,(T,c)$ in terms of the norm $\Vert T\Vert$ and the minimum modulus $[T]$ of $T$. Finally, we characterise approximately angle preserving mappings.

Main results of the paper are as follows:

(1) For any finite metric space $M$ the Lipschitz-free space on $M$ contains a large well-complemented subspace that is close to $\ell _{1}^{n}$.

(2) Lipschitz-free spaces on large classes of recursively defined sequences of graphs are not uniformly isomorphic to $\ell _{1}^{n}$ of the corresponding dimensions. These classes contain well-known families of diamond graphs and Laakso graphs.

Interesting features of our approach are: (a) We consider averages over groups of cycle-preserving bijections of edge sets of graphs that are not necessarily graph automorphisms. (b) In the case of such recursive families of graphs as Laakso graphs, we use the well-known approach of Grünbaum (1960) and Rudin (1962) for estimating projection constants in the case where invariant projections are not unique.

Let $n$ be a positive integer. A $C^{\ast }$-algebra is said to be $n$-subhomogeneous if all its irreducible representations have dimension at most $n$. We give various approximation properties characterising $n$-subhomogeneous $C^{\ast }$-algebras.

We introduce a second numerical index for real Banach spaces with non-trivial Lie algebra, as the best constant of equivalence between the numerical radius and the quotient of the operator norm modulo the Lie algebra. We present a number of examples and results concerning absolute sums, duality, vector-valued function spaces…which show that, in many cases, the behaviour of this second numerical index differs from the one of the classical numerical index. As main results, we prove that Hilbert spaces have second numerical index one and that they are the only spaces with this property among the class of Banach spaces with one-unconditional basis and non-trivial Lie algebra. Besides, an application to the Bishop-Phelps-Bollobás property for the numerical radius is given.

Given two (real) normed (linear) spaces $X$ and $Y$, let $X\otimes _{1}Y=(X\otimes Y,\Vert \cdot \Vert )$, where $\Vert (x,y)\Vert =\Vert x\Vert +\Vert y\Vert$. It is known that $X\otimes _{1}Y$ is $2$-UR if and only if both $X$ and $Y$ are UR (where we use UR as an abbreviation for uniformly rotund). We prove that if $X$ is $m$-dimensional and $Y$ is $k$-UR, then $X\otimes _{1}Y$ is $(m+k)$-UR. In the other direction, we observe that if $X\otimes _{1}Y$ is $k$-UR, then both $X$ and $Y$ are $(k-1)$-UR. Given a monotone norm $\Vert \cdot \Vert _{E}$ on $\mathbb{R}^{2}$, we let $X\otimes _{E}Y=(X\otimes Y,\Vert \cdot \Vert )$ where $\Vert (x,y)\Vert =\Vert (\Vert x\Vert _{X},\Vert y\Vert _{Y})\Vert _{E}$. It is known that if $X$ is uniformly rotund in every direction, $Y$ has the weak fixed point property for nonexpansive maps (WFPP) and $\Vert \cdot \Vert _{E}$ is strictly monotone, then $X\otimes _{E}Y$ has WFPP. Using the notion of $k$-uniform rotundity relative to every $k$-dimensional subspace we show that this result holds with a weaker condition on $X$.

A precise quantitative version of the following qualitative statement is proved: If a finite-dimensional normed space contains approximately Euclidean subspaces of all proportional dimensions, then every proportional dimensional quotient space has the same property.

We investigate the isomorphic structure of the Cesàro spaces and their duals, the Tandori spaces. The main result states that the Cesàro function space $\text{Ces}_{\infty }$ and its sequence counterpart $\text{ces}_{\infty }$ are isomorphic. This is rather surprising since $\text{Ces}_{\infty }$ (like Talagrand’s example) has no natural lattice predual. We prove that $\text{ces}_{\infty }$ is not isomorphic to $\ell _{\infty }$ nor is $\text{Ces}_{\infty }$ isomorphic to the Tandori space $\widetilde{L_{1}}$ with the norm $\Vert f\Vert _{\widetilde{L_{1}}}=\Vert \widetilde{f}\Vert _{L_{1}}$, where $\widetilde{f}(t):=\text{ess}\,\sup _{s\geqslant t}|f(s)|$. Our investigation also involves an examination of the Schur and Dunford–Pettis properties of Cesàro and Tandori spaces. In particular, using results of Bourgain we show that a wide class of Cesàro–Marcinkiewicz and Cesàro–Lorentz spaces have the latter property.

The notion of metric compactification was introduced by Gromov and later rediscovered by Rieffel. It has been mainly studied on proper geodesic metric spaces. We present here a generalization of the metric compactification that can be applied to infinite-dimensional Banach spaces. Thereafter we give a complete description of the metric compactification of infinite-dimensional $\ell _{p}$ spaces for all $1\leqslant p<\infty$. We also give a full characterization of the metric compactification of infinite-dimensional Hilbert spaces.

We generalize the notion of summable Szlenk index from a Banach space to an arbitrary weak*-compact set. We prove that a weak*-compact set has summable Szlenk index if and only if its weak*-closed, absolutely convex hull does. As a consequence, we offer a new, short proof of a result from Draga and Kochanek [J. Funct. Anal. 271 (2016), 642–671] regarding the behavior of summability of the Szlenk index under c0 direct sums. We also use this result to prove that the injective tensor product of two Banach spaces has summable Szlenk index if both spaces do, which answers a question from Draga and Kochanek [Proc. Amer. Math. Soc. 145 (2017), 1685–1698]. As a final consequence of this result, we prove that a separable Banach space has summable Szlenk index if and only if it embeds into a Banach space with an asymptotic c0 finite dimensional decomposition, which generalizes a result from Odell et al. [Q. J. Math. 59, (2008), 85–122]. We also introduce an ideal norm $\mathfrak{s}$ on the class $\mathfrak{S}$ of operators with summable Szlenk index and prove that $(\mathfrak{S}, \mathfrak{s})$ is a Banach ideal. For 1 ⩽ p ⩽ ∞, we prove precise results regarding the summability of the Szlenk index of an ℓp direct sum of a collection of operators.

We study approximation of operators between Banach spaces $X$ and $Y$ that nearly attain their norms in a given point by operators that attain their norms at the same point. When such approximations exist, we say that the pair $(X,Y)$ has the pointwise Bishop–Phelps–Bollobás property (pointwise BPB property for short). In this paper we mostly concentrate on those $X$, called universal pointwise BPB domain spaces, such that $(X,Y)$ possesses pointwise BPB property for every $Y$, and on those $Y$, called universal pointwise BPB range spaces, such that $(X,Y)$ enjoys pointwise BPB property for every uniformly smooth $X$. We show that every universal pointwise BPB domain space is uniformly convex and that $L_{p}(\unicode[STIX]{x1D707})$ spaces fail to have this property when $p>2$. No universal pointwise BPB range space can be simultaneously uniformly convex and uniformly smooth unless its dimension is one. We also discuss a version of the pointwise BPB property for compact operators.

We prove that Krivine’s Function Calculus is compatible with integration. Let $(\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FA},\unicode[STIX]{x1D6F4},\unicode[STIX]{x1D707})$ be a finite measure space, $X$ a Banach lattice, $\mathbf{x}\in X^{n}$, and $f:\mathbb{R}^{n}\times \unicode[STIX]{x1D6FA}\rightarrow \mathbb{R}$ a function such that $f(\cdot ,\unicode[STIX]{x1D714})$ is continuous and positively homogeneous for every $\unicode[STIX]{x1D714}\in \unicode[STIX]{x1D6FA}$, and $f(\mathbf{s},\cdot )$ is integrable for every $\mathbf{s}\in \mathbb{R}^{n}$. Put $F(\mathbf{s})=\int f(\mathbf{s},\unicode[STIX]{x1D714})\,d\unicode[STIX]{x1D707}(\unicode[STIX]{x1D714})$ and define $F(\mathbf{x})$ and $f(\mathbf{x},\unicode[STIX]{x1D714})$ via Krivine’s Function Calculus. We prove that under certain natural assumptions $F(\mathbf{x})=\int f(\mathbf{x},\unicode[STIX]{x1D714})\,d\unicode[STIX]{x1D707}(\unicode[STIX]{x1D714})$, where the right hand side is a Bochner integral.

In this paper, we give a complete description of left symmetric points forBirkhoff orthogonality in the preduals of von Neumann algebras. As aconsequence, except for $\mathbb{C}$ , $\ell _{\infty }^{2}$ and $M_{2}(\mathbb{C})$ , there are no von Neumann algebras whose preduals havenonzero left symmetric points for Birkhoff orthogonality.

Our main result states that whenever we have a non-Euclidean norm $\Vert \cdot \Vert$ on a two-dimensional vector space $X$, there exists some $x\neq 0$ such that for every $\unicode[STIX]{x1D706}\neq 1$, $\unicode[STIX]{x1D706}>0$, there exist $y,z\in X$ satisfying $\Vert y\Vert =\unicode[STIX]{x1D706}\Vert x\Vert$, $z\neq 0$ and $z$ belongs to the bisectors $B(-x,x)$ and $B(-y,y)$. We also give several results about the geometry of the unit sphere of strictly convex planes.