Characterizations of universal finite representability and \(b\)-convexity of Banach spaces via ball coverings (Q1757961)

For a Banach space \(X\), let us denote, as usual, by \(S_X\) and \(B_X\) its unit sphere and unit ball, respectively. The author shows that \(X\) is a uniformly non-\(\ell_\infty^{(n)}\) space if and only if there are \(\alpha, \beta > 0\) such that, for every \(n\)-dimensional subspace \(Y \subset X\), there is a collection of \(2n -1\) balls \(B_k = y_k + r_k B_Y\) in \(Y\) such that \(S_Y \subset \bigcup_{k=1}^{2n-1}B_k \subset Y \setminus \alpha B_Y\) and \(r_k \leq \beta\) for all \(k = 1, \dots , 2n - 1\). By a duality argument, this implies a characterization of the \(B\)-convexity of \(X\) in terms of ball-coverings of finite dimensional quotient spaces of \(X\).