On extreme contractions and the norm attainment set of a bounded linear operator (Q1738220)

In [J. Math. Anal. Appl. 457, No. 1, 67--76 (2018; Zbl 1393.46008)], the author of the present paper posed the question of characterizing the norm attaining set of operators on Banach spaces. For Banach spaces \(X\) and \(Y\), the norm attaining set of an operator \(T\in L(X,Y)\) is the set of norm one vectors \(x\) in \(X\) such that \(\Vert Tx\Vert=\Vert T\Vert\). In the case where \(X\) and \(Y\) are Hilbert spaces, this well written paper gives a complete characterization of the norm attaining set for every operator. As a consequence of the above, after the study of extreme contractions, the author obtains that an operator on a finite-dimensional Hilbert space is an extreme contraction if and only if it is an isometry. Also, Hilbert spaces are characterized as those Banach spaces where the set of extreme contractions agree with the set of isometries for every two-dimensional subspace.