Complex structures on twisted Hilbert spaces (Q1686402)

A twisted Hilbert space is a Banach space containing a subspace isomorphic to a Hilbert space, whose quotient is also isomorphic to a Hilbert space. The subspace need not be complemented, and the first non-trivial example was exhibited by \textit{P. Enflo} et al. [Math. Scand. 36, 199--210 (1975; Zbl 0314.46015)]. It is shown here that, for any real non-trivial twisted Hilbert space, there is a complex structure on the subspace which cannot be extended to a complex structure on the whole space. Slightly later, \textit{N. J. Kalton} and \textit{N. T. Peck} [Trans. Am. Math. Soc. 255, 1--30 (1979; Zbl 0424.46004)] introduced a particular example \(Z_2\), as part of a general theory of twisted sums. This space is a twisted sum of the real sequence space \(\ell_2\) with itself, and thus is easily seen to be isomorphic to all of its subspaces of codimension two, and to admit a complex structure. It remains unknown whether \(Z_2\) is isomorphic to its hyperplanes; this would follow if it could be shown that hyperplanes in \(Z_2\) do not admit complex structures. As a substantial step in this direction, it is shown that no complex structure on the subspace \(\ell_2\) can be extended to a complex structure on any hyperplane of \(Z_2\) containing it.