Spaces with large projection constants (Q1069099)

The relative projection constant \(\gamma\) (X,Y) of a closed subspace X of a Banach space Y is defined to be the infimum of \(\| P\|\) for all projections P of Y onto X. The projection constant \(\gamma\) (X) of a Banach space X is the supremum of \(\gamma\) (X,Y) for all spaces Y which contain X as a closed subspace. In this paper, for each prime k, an explicit construction is given of a complex k-dimensional space \(X_ k\) with projection constant \(\gamma (X_ k)=\sqrt{k}-1/\sqrt{k}+1/k\). It is also shown that there exist real k-dimensional spaces \(X_ k\) with \(\gamma (X_ k)\geq \sqrt{k}-1\) for a subsequence of integers k. Thus in both cases \(\gamma (X_ k)/\sqrt{k}\to 1\) which is, then, the maximum possible value since \(\gamma (X_ k)\leq \sqrt{k}\) is generally true.