Some equivalence relations which are Borel reducible to isomorphism between separable Banach spaces (Q2382322): Difference between revisions

Gowers' fundamental theorem asserts that the Hilbert space is characterized by the fact that the isomorphism equivalence relation between its infinite-dimensional subspaces has only one class. Quite surprisingly, it is still unknown whether this equivalence relation has infinitely many classes for every Banach space which is not Hilbertian. The present work shows that for natural Banach spaces (namely \(c_0\), \(l_p\) or \(L_p\), with \(1\leq p <2\)), there is a continuum of isomorphism classes and that in fact more is true: namely the isomorphism equivalence relation is greater, in the sense of Borel reducibility, than certain classical equivalence relations, and thus the complexity of the isomorphism relation is high. Quite a lot of work along these lines has been accomplished in the last ten years: for instance, V. Ferenczi, A. Louveau and C. Rosendal have recently shown that the isomorphism relation between separable Banach spaces has maximal complexity among the analytic equivalence relations on Polish spaces. However some important problems remain open: for instance it is still unknown if there is a continuum of isomorphism classes from complemented subspaces of reflexive non-Hilbertian \(L_p\) spaces, although J. Bourgain, H. P. Rosenthal and G. Schechtman showed 30 years ago that there are uncountably many such classes.