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.

Given a Banach operator ideal $\mathcal A$, we investigate the approximation property related to the ideal of $\mathcal A$-compact operators, $\mathcal K_{\mathcal A}$-AP. We prove that a Banach space X has the $\mathcal K_{\mathcal A}$-AP if and only if there exists a λ ≥ 1 such that for every Banach space Y and every R ∈ $\mathcal K_{\mathcal A}$(Y, X),

$$\begin{equation}R \in \overline {\{SR : S \in \mathcal F(X, X), \|SR\|_{\mathcal K_{\mathcal A}} \leq \lambda \|R\|_{\mathcal K_{\mathcal A}}\}}^{\tau_{c}}.\end{equation}$$

$\mathcal A$

$\mathcal K_{(\mathcal A^{{\rm adj}})^{{\rm dual}}}$

$\mathcal K_{\mathcal A}$

We establish the mapping properties of Fourier-type transforms on rearrangement-invariant quasi-Banach function spaces. In particular, we have the mapping properties of the Laplace transform, the Hankel transforms, the Kontorovich-Lebedev transform and some oscillatory integral operators. We achieve these mapping properties by using an interpolation functor that can explicitly generate a given rearrangement-invariant quasi-Banach function space via Lebesgue spaces.

We construct a weak Hilbert space that is a twisted Hilbert space.

Extending recent results by Cascales et al. [‘Plasticity of the unit ball of a strictly convex Banach space’, Rev. R. Acad. Cienc. Exactas Fís. Nat. Ser. A Mat.110(2) (2016), 723–727], we demonstrate that for every Banach space $X$ and every collection $Z_{i},i\in I$ , of strictly convex Banach spaces, every nonexpansive bijection from the unit ball of $X$ to the unit ball of the sum of $Z_{i}$ by $\ell _{1}$ is an isometry.

We present a construction that enables one to find Banach spaces $X$ whose sets $\operatorname{NA}(X)$ of norm attaining functionals do not contain two-dimensional subspaces and such that, consequently, $X$ does not contain proximinal subspaces of finite codimension greater than one, extending the results recently provided by Read [Banach spaces with no proximinal subspaces of codimension 2, Israel J. Math. (to appear)] and Rmoutil [Norm-attaining functionals need not contain 2-dimensional subspaces, J. Funct. Anal. 272 (2017), 918–928]. Roughly speaking, we construct an equivalent renorming with the requested properties for every Banach space $X$ where the set $\operatorname{NA}(X)$ for the original norm is not “too large”. The construction can be applied to every Banach space containing $c_{0}$ and having a countable system of norming functionals, in particular, to separable Banach spaces containing $c_{0}$. We also provide some geometric properties of the norms we have constructed.

Given a Banach space X and a real number α ≥ 1, we write: (1) D(X) ≤ α if, for any locally finite metric space A, all finite subsets of which admit bilipschitz embeddings into X with distortions ≤ C, the space A itself admits a bilipschitz embedding into X with distortion ≤ α ⋅ C; (2) D(X) = α+ if, for every ϵ > 0, the condition D(X) ≤ α + ϵ holds, while D(X) ≤ α does not; (3) D(X) ≤ α+ if D(X) = α+ or D(X) ≤ α. It is known that D(X) is bounded by a universal constant, but the available estimates for this constant are rather large. The following results have been proved in this work: (1) D((⊕n=1∞Xn)p) ≤ 1+ for every nested family of finite-dimensional Banach spaces {Xn}n=1∞ and every 1 ≤ p ≤ ∞. (2) D((⊕n=1∞ ℓ∞n)p) = 1+ for 1 < p < ∞. (3) D(X) ≤ 4+ for every Banach space X with no nontrivial cotype. Statement (3) is a strengthening of the Baudier–Lancien result (2008).

New inequalities relating the norm $n(X)$ and the numerical radius $w(X)$ of invertible bounded linear Hilbert space operators were announced by Hosseini and Omidvar [‘Some inequalities for the numerical radius for Hilbert space operators’, Bull. Aust. Math. Soc.94 (2016), 489–496]. For example, they asserted that $w(AB)\leq$ $2w(A)w(B)$ for invertible bounded linear Hilbert space operators $A$ and $B$ . We identify implicit hypotheses used in their discovery. The inequalities and their proofs can be made good by adding the extra hypotheses which take the form $n(X^{-1})=n(X)^{-1}$ . We give counterexamples in the absence of such additional hypotheses. Finally, we show that these hypotheses yield even stronger conclusions, for example, $w(AB)=w(A)w(B)$ .

The purpose of this article is to generalize some known characterizations of Banach space properties in terms of graph preclusion. In particular, it is shown that superreflexivity can be characterized by the non-equi-bi-Lipschitz embeddability of any family of bundle graphs generated by a non-trivial finitely branching bundle graph. It is likewise shown that asymptotic uniform convexifiability can be characterized within the class of reflexive Banach spaces with an unconditional asymptotic structure by the non-equi-bi-Lipschitz embeddability of any family of bundle graphs generated by a non-trivial $\aleph _{0}$-branching bundle graph. For the specific case of $L_{1}$, it is shown that every countably branching bundle graph bi-Lipschitzly embeds into $L_{1}$ with distortion no worse than $2$.

The aim of this note is to study octahedrality in vector-valued Lipschitz-free Banach spaces on a metric space, under topological hypotheses on it, by analysing the weak-star strong diameter 2 property in Lipschitz function spaces. Also, we show an example that proves that our results are optimal and that octahedrality in vector-valued Lipschitz-free Banach spaces actually relies on the underlying metric space as well as on the Banach one.