Renormings of nonseparable reflexive Banach spaces and diametrically complete sets with empty interior (Q2238941)

A nonempty, non-singleton, bounded (closed and convex) set \(C\) in an infinite-dimensional Banach space \(X\) is said to be \textit{diametrically complete}, DC in short, if, for every \(x \in X \setminus C\), the diameter of \(C \cup \{x\}\) is strictly bigger than the diameter of \(C\). A nonempty, bounded and convex set in an infinite-dimensional Banach space \(X\) is said to be \textit{diametral} if its self-radius agrees with its diameter. In [\textit{J.~P. Moreno} et al., Can. J. Math. 58, No.~4, 820--842 (2006; Zbl 1110.52003)] it is proved that only diametral sets may both have empty interior and be DC. As a sufficient condition in order for DC sets with empty interior to exist, in [\textit{E.~Maluta} and \textit{P.~L. Papini}, J. Math. Anal. Appl. 424, No.~2, 1335--1347 (2015; Zbl 1320.46014)] it is proved that any infinite-dimensional reflexive Banach space \(X\) that admits diametral sets, admits DC sets with empty interior, too, provided it enjoys the nonstrict Opial property (\(X\) is said to enjoy the \textit{nonstrict Opial property} whenever for each weakly null sequence \(\{x_n\}\) and every \(x\in X\) it happens that \(\limsup \|x_n\| \leq \limsup \|x_n - x\|\)). In the present paper the authors consider the question of the existence of DC sets with empty interior under suitable renorming in the non-separable case, the separable one having already been settled in [\textit{M.~Budzyńska} et al., J. Funct. Anal. 278, No.~7, Article ID 108418, 22~p. (2020; Zbl 1450.46008)]. As the main result the authors prove that any nonseparable reflexive Banach space \(X\) enjoying the nonstrict Opial property admits an equivalent norm under which a DC set with empty interior exists. If, in addition, \(X\) enjoys the Kadec-Klee property, then the new norm can be chosen to be LUR. The construction of the new norm is inspired by Day's norm on \(c_0\) and is based on the well-known fact that every infinite-dimensional reflexive Banach space has an infinite-dimensional quotient space with a Schauder basis. As an open problem the authors raise the question of whether, for infinite-dimensional reflexive nonseparable \(X\), a renorming admitting DC sets with empty interior is available even without assuming that \(X\) enjoys the nonstrict Opial and the Kadec-Klee properties.