Star-finite coverings of Banach spaces (Q2207675)

A covering of a normed space \(X\) is said to be: \begin{itemize} \item[--] \textit{star-finite} if each of its members meets only finitely many other members; \item[--] \textit{locally finite} if each point of \(X\) has a neighborhood that meets only finitely many members; \item[--] \textit{point-finite} if each point of \(X\) belongs to only finitely many members. \end{itemize} While partial results are available in the literature about point-finite and locally finite coverings of Banach spaces by closed balls, the possibility to get star-finite coverings by closed balls (SFCB in the following) seems to have not yet been investigated. This paper provides a first deep approach to this topic that turns out to be significant since star-finiteness obviously implies point-finiteness but, as the authors show, is independent of local finiteness when \(X\) is infinite-dimensional. One of the main results is a list of prohibitive conditions for the existence of SFCB of a Banach spaces \(X\): among them \(X\) being locally uniformly rotund or uniformly Fréchet smooth. The result can be obtained via the following significant technical condition. The infinite-dimensional Banach space \(X\) does not admit SFCB whenever for every \(x\) in the unit sphere of \(X\) there exists \(\varepsilon_x > 0\) such that, for every countable family \(\mathcal B\) of pairwise disjoint closed balls of radius 1 not intersecting the closed unit ball of \(X\), we have \(\mathrm{sup}_{B \in \mathcal B}\, \mathrm{dist}(x,B) > \varepsilon_x\). The authors point out that this is only a sufficient condition for a Banach space to not admit SFCB as is shown by the space \(c_0(\Gamma)\), \(\Gamma\) any infinite set. Note that it is well known that such a space enjoys a locally finite covering (even tiling) by translates of its closed unit ball. Completeness of \(X\) cannot be avoided in formulating prohibitive conditions, at least in the separable case: in fact, the authors prove that any normed space having a countable algebraic basis admits SFCB. Further significant results obtained in the paper concern prohibitive conditions for the existence of countable SFCB in spaces of continuous functions or the existence of coverings by pairwise disjoint closed balls (the first known example of such coverings was produced by [\textit{V.~Klee}, Math. Ann. 257, 251--260 (1981; Zbl 0453.41021)]. Some open problems are listed: for instance, no infinite-dimensional separable or Fréchet smooth Banach space admitting SFCB is known. Finally, it is shown that, replacing closed balls by Fréchet smooth centrally symmetric bounded bodies, a star-finite covering is available in \(c_0(\Gamma)\) for any set \(\Gamma\). Many of the results shown in the paper are far from being standard; some of them are obtained by clever adaptations of known techniques. However, despite its unaivoidable technicality, the paper is pleasant to read.