Some properties related to nested sequences of balls in Banach spaces (Q5935717): Difference between revisions

This survey covers an interesting range of topics in the geometry of (the unit ball \(B(X)\) in) a Banach space \(X\). The results and proofs highlight two ideas that deserve wide circulation: (i) rotund points of \(B(X)\) and (ii) unbounded nested sequences of balls. An extreme point of \(B(X)\) is a point which is not the mid-point of a line segment lying in \(B(X)\); a rotund point is one which is not the end-point of such a segment. Vertices of a polyhedral ball are examples of extreme points that are not rotund points. A more precise relationship is given in Section 3: if \(\|x\|= \|x^*\|= |x^*(x)|= 1 (x\in X, x^* \in X^*)\) then \(x^*\) is a rotund point of \(B(X^*)\) implies that \(x\) is a smooth point of \(B(X)\) which implies that \(x^*\) is an extreme point of \(B(X^*)\) (neither implication is reversible). A sequence of balls, \(B_n\) is nested if \(B_n \subseteq B_{n+1}\) for all \(n\); it is unbounded if the sequence of radii increases to \(+\infty\); and it is said to be straight if the sequence of centers lies on a half line through the origin. The connection between concepts (i) and (ii) is that \(x^*\) is a rotund point of \(B(X^*)\) if and only if for every unbounded sequence of balls \(B_n\) in \(X\) for which \(x^*\) is bounded below on \(\cup B_n\), it follows that \(\cup B_n\) is a half-space determined by \(x^*\). Further (Theorem 4.3), \(x\) is a smooth point of \(B(X)\) if and only if for every straight unbounded nested sequence \(B_n\) of balls (with centers on the ray through \(x\)), \(\cup B_n\) is either all of \(X\) or a half-space. Relationships between these ideas and a variety of other concepts including the uniqueness of Hahn-Banach extensions, locally uniform rotund points and five types of asymptotic norming properties are also discussed.