Some problems on the structure of Banach spaces (Q1322707)

S. Banach in the thirties of this century presented a question in the Banach space theory: Does every Banach space contain a subspace almost isometric to \(c_ 0\) or to \(\ell^ p\) for some \(1\leq p< \infty\)? On the one hand, counterexamples to this question were discovered later, at the same time some rich natural families of Banach spaces for which the answer is affirmative were found too. In the structure theory of Banach spaces, Banach's question can be changed into the following questions: (i) For what class of Banach spaces \(X\) is it true that every subspace of \(X\) contains \(c_ 0\) or some \(\ell^ p\) \((1\leq p< \infty)\) almost isometrically? (ii) Does \(X\) have a subspace which is either reflexive, or isomorphic, to \(c_ 0\) or to \(\ell^ 1\)? This is called James' trichotomy problem. (iii) Does \(X\) have a subspace which is either isomorphic to a dual space or to \(c_ 0\)? This is called Rosenthal's dichotomy problem. (iv) If \(\ell^ 1\) does not imbed in \(X\), does \(X\) have a subspace with separable dual? (v) Does \(X\) have a subspace with an unconditional basic sequence? Recently, question (v) has been solved negatively by \textit{W. T. Gowers} [The unconditional basic sequence problem, preprint], but (i), (ii), (iii) and (ii) are still open. Some relationships among these are known e.g., (v) implies (ii) iff (iii) and (iv) are positive, (v) implies (ii), (ii) implies (iii) and (iv), (iii) and (iv) imply (v), and (ii) is weaker than (v). These open problems are fundamental for the structural theory of Banach spaces. In this paper, the author introduces some related notations and some methods leading to an attempt to solve these problems.