Order preserving and order reversing operators on the class of convex functions in Banach spaces (Q473176): Difference between revisions

For a real Banach space \(X\), denote by \(\mathcal C(X)\) the set of all lsc proper convex functions \(f:X\to\mathbb R\cup\{\infty\}.\) An operator \(T:\mathcal C(X)\to\mathcal C(X)\) is called order preserving if \(f\leq g\Rightarrow Tf\leq Tg,\) and fully order preserving if it is bijective and \(f\leq g\iff Tf\leq Tg\) for all \(f,g\in\mathcal C(X).\) The main result of the paper (Theorem 1) contains a characterization of fully order preserving operators on \(\mathcal C(X)\) as those operators \(T:\mathcal C(X)\to\mathcal C(X)\) for which there exist \(c\in X, \, w\in X^*,\,\beta\in\mathbb R,\, \tau\in(0,\infty)\) and an automorphism \(E:X\to X\) such that \[ T(f)(x)=f(Ex+c)+\langle w,x\rangle+\beta\, \] for all \(f\in\mathcal C(X).\) The characterization of order preserving involutions (i.e., operators satisfying \(T(Tf)=f\)) is obtained as a corollary. As the authors succinctly express: ``The result in Theorem 1 can be rephrased as saying that the identity operator is the only fully order preserving operator in \(\mathcal C(X)\), up to addition of affine functionals, pre-composition with affine operators, and multiplication by positive scalars.'' The order reversing operators are defined on \(\mathcal C(X)\) with values in \(\mathcal C_{w^*} (X)\), the family of all \(w^*\)-lsc proper convex functions \(g:X^*\to\mathbb R\cup\{\infty\}.\) The fully order reversing operators admit a similar characterization in terms of the Fenchel conjugate \(f^*(u)=\inf_{x\in X}[\langle u,x\rangle-f(x)],\, u\in X^*,\) of functions \(f\in\mathcal C(X)\), which is an order reversing operator: \(f\leq g \Rightarrow g^*\leq f^*.\) The obtained results extend to the infinite-dimensional setting those obtained by \textit{S. Artstein-Avidan} and \textit{V. Milman} [Ann. Math. (2) 169, No. 2, 661--674 (2009; Zbl 1173.26008)] in the finite-dimensional case. The extension is nontrivial and requires different methods.