Three-space problems for the approximation property (Q1012480)

It follows from the James--Lindenstrauss construction that there is a Banach space \(X\) with the approximation property having a subspace \(Z\) with the approximation property such that \(X/Z\) fails the approximation property. It has been a long-standing open problem whether there also exists a reflexive space \(X\) like this. Here, the author provides such an example with \(X=\ell_q\), \(1<q<2\), and a subspace \(Z\) that is isomorphic to \(\ell_q\). By duality, this is equivalent to saying that, for \(2<p<\infty\), \(\ell_p\) has a subspace \(Y_p\) failing the approximation property such that \(\ell_p/Y_p\) has the approximation property. To prove the latter, the author reviews the Enflo--Davie construction of subspaces of \(\ell_p\) without the approximation property. This construction is built on random choices of orthogonal matrices, and the author notes that with probability~\(1\) the resulting subspace \(Y_p\) fails the approximation property if \(2<p<\infty\) (Theorem~1). On the other hand, and this is the key result of the paper, with probability~\(1\) the space \(Y_p\) is isomorphic to \(\ell_p\) for \(1<p<2\) (Theorem~2). These two results quickly imply the main theorem. The main ingredient in the proof of Theorem~2 is a refinement of the Kashin decomposition.