Birkhoff-James orthogonality and smoothness of bounded linear operators (Q739128)

Let \(X\) be a real Banach space. We recall that given two vectors \(x,y \in X\), \(x\) is said to be orthogonal to \(y\), in the sense of Birkhoff and James, if \(\|x\| \leq \|x+ \lambda y\|\) for all real numbers \(\lambda\). In this case we write \(x \perp_{B} y\). For a bounded linear operator \(T \in {\mathcal B}(X,Y)\) that attains its norm at a unit vector \(x \in X\), let \(M_T\) denote the set of all such unit vectors. For \(T,A \in {\mathcal B}(X,Y)\), for \(x \in M_T\), if \(T(x) \perp_{B} A(x)\), then \(T \perp_{B}A\). When \(X\) is reflexive, in the class of compact operators, the authors show that the converse of the preceding statement holds if \(M_T = D \cup -D\), where \(D\) is a compact connected subset of unit vectors (note that under these assumptions, \(M_T\) is a non-empty set). Since for a smooth point \(x\) this orthogonality is right additive at \(x\), the authors also consider smooth points of spaces of operators. Theorem 4.2 is a folklore result. It can be deduced using the fact that the unique functional corresponding to a smooth point is an extreme point of the dual unit ball and using the structure of the dual unit ball of the space of compact operators (see [\textit{P. Harmand} et al., \(M\)-ideals in Banach spaces and Banach algebras. Berlin: Springer-Verlag (1993; Zbl 0789.46011)]).