Lineability and spaceability: a new approach (Q2174205)

Let \(E\) be a vector space and \(\alpha\) a cardinal number. A subset \(A\) of \(E\) is called \(\alpha\)-lineable if \(A\cup \{0\}\) contains an \(\alpha\)-dimensional linear subspace of \(E\). When \(E\) is a topological vector space, then \(A\) is called \(\alpha\)-spaceable if \(A\cup \{0\}\) contains a closed \(\alpha\)-dimensional subspace of \(E\). Let now the considered vector spaces be over the field of all real or complex numbers. Let \(\mathrm{card}(X)\) denote the cardinality of a set \(X\), let \(\mathfrak{c}=\mathrm{card}(\mathbb{R})\), and \(\aleph _{0}=\mathrm{card}(\mathbb{N})\). The authors first introduce the following concepts that are more restrictive than lineability and spaceability. Let \(\alpha \), \(\beta \), \(\gamma \) be cardinal numbers, where \(\alpha <\beta \leq \gamma \), and let \(V\) be a vector space with \(\dim V=\gamma \). A set \(A\subset V\) is: (i) \((\alpha ,\beta )\)-lineable if it is \(\alpha\)-lineable, and for every subspace \(W_{\alpha }\subset V\) with \(W_{\alpha }\subset A\cup \{0\}\) and \(\dim W_{\alpha }=\alpha \), there is a subspace \(W_{\beta }\subset V\) with \(\dim W_{\beta }=\beta \) and \(W_{\alpha }\subset W_{\beta }\subset A\cup \{0\}\). (ii) \((\alpha ,\beta )\)-spaceable if it is \(\alpha \)-lineable, and for every subspace \(W_{\alpha }\subset V\) with \(W_{\alpha }\subset A\cup \{0\}\) and \(\dim W_{\alpha }=\alpha \), there is a closed subspace \(W_{\beta }\subset V\) with \(\dim W_{\beta }=\beta \) and \(W_{\alpha }\subset W_{\beta }\subset A\cup \{0\}\). For cardinal numbers \(\alpha_{1}\), \(\alpha_{2}\) where \(\alpha _{1}<\alpha_{2}\), authors next present two examples to show that in general \((\alpha_{1},\beta)\)-lineability does not imply \((\alpha_{2},\beta)\)-lineability and vice versa. As usual, let \(\ell _{p}\), \(p>0\), denote the Banach space of sequences \(\left( x_{j}\right) _{j=1}^{\infty }\) such that \(\left\Vert \left( x_{j}\right)_{j=1}^{\infty }\right\Vert _{p}=\left( \sum_{j=1}^{\infty }\left\vert x_{j}\right\vert ^{p}\right) ^{1/p}<\infty \). The authors develop a technique to characterize the \((\alpha ,\mathfrak{c})\)-spaceability of \(\ell_{p}\backslash \bigcup _{0<q<p}\ell _{q}\) for all \(\alpha <\mathfrak{c}\). They prove that for all \(p>0\) the set \(\ell _{p}\backslash \bigcup _{0<q<p}\ell _{q}\) is \((\alpha ,\mathfrak{c})\)-spaceable in \(\ell _{p}\) if and only if \(\alpha < \aleph _{0}\). The authors conclude the paper by presenting two examples of sets where they prove \((1,\mathfrak{c})\)-lineability and \((1,\mathfrak{c})\)-spaceability, respectively, and propose the general case (where \(\alpha\) does not necessarily equal \(1\)) as open problems.