On Banach spaces whose group of isometries acts micro-transitively on the unit sphere (Q2310492)

Recall that a Banach space \(X\) is said to be transitive if, given two points \(x,y\) in the unit sphere \(S_X\) of \(X\), there exists an onto linear isometry \(T:X\to X\) such that \(T(x)=y\). A~famous problem of {S. Mazur } is whether any separable transitive Banach space is isometrically isomorphic to a Hilbert space. This problem has motivated a vast outflow of literature on transitive Banach spaces and related properties. In the paper under review, the authors deal with two variants of this property. The first one is the following concept of micro-transitivity: a Banach space \(X\) is said to be micro-transitive if, given \(\varepsilon>0\), there exists \(\delta>0\) such that, if \(x,y\in S_X\) satisfy that \(\Vert x-y\Vert<\delta\), then there exists an onto linear isometry \(T:X\to X\) such that \(T(x)=y\) and \(\Vert T- \operatorname{Id}\Vert<\varepsilon\), where \(\operatorname{Id}:X\to X\) denotes the identity operator on \(X\) (actually, we have considered here a reformulation of classical micro-transitivity in terms of actions of the group of isometries that the authors prove in Proposition 2.1). The second one is a generalisation of the previous property introduced in this paper: a Banach space \(X\) is said to be uniformly micro-semitransitive if, given \(\varepsilon>0\), there exists \(\delta>0\) such that, if \(x,y\in S_X\) satisfy that \(\Vert x-y\Vert<\delta\), then there an operator \(T:X\to X\) with \(\Vert T\Vert=1\) and such that \(T(x)=y\) and \(\Vert T- \operatorname{Id} \Vert<\varepsilon\). After an interesting discussion of the previous definitions, some stability results are proved. For instance, the authors prove that, if a Banach space \(X\) is micro-semitransitive (respectively, micro-transitive) and \(Y\) is any separable subspace of \(X\), then there exists a separable micro-semitransitive (respectively, micro-transitive) subspace of \(X\) containing \(Y\) (Theorem~2.6). Furthermore, the authors find deep connections between uniform micro-semitransitivity (respectively, micro-transitivity) and Bishop-Phelps-Bollobás properties that the authors exploit in both directions. In order to exhibit this connection, let us briefly introduce a bit of notation: given two Banach spaces \(X\) and \(Y\), it is said that the pair \((X,Y)\) has the Bishop-Phelps-Bollobás property (BPBp) if, for every \(\varepsilon>0\), there exists \(\eta(\varepsilon)>0\) so that, if a norm-one operator \(T:X\to Y\) satisfies that \(\Vert T(x_0)\Vert>1-\eta(\varepsilon)\), then there exists a norm-one operator \(S:X\to Y\) and an element \(x\in S_X\) with \(\Vert S\Vert=\Vert S(x)\Vert\) satisfying that \(\Vert x-x_0\Vert<\varepsilon\) and \(\Vert T-S\Vert<\varepsilon\). If, in the previous definition, it can be taken \(x=x_0\), then we say that the pair \((X,Y)\) has the pointwise Bishop-Phelps-Bollobás property (pointwise BPB property). With the above definitions in mind, the authors apply techniques of micro-transitivity by proving that, if \(X\) is a uniformly micro-semitransitive Banach space and the pair \((X,Y)\) has the BPBp, then the pair \((X,Y)\) actually has the pointwise BPB property. In the reverse direction, the authors make use of the theory of the BPBp to conclude that uniformly micro-semitransitive Banach spaces are both uniformly convex and uniformly smooth. Although the authors left as an open question whether a Banach space whose norm is uniformly micro-semitransitive is Hilbertian, several results are proved in this direction in the last section of this nice and interesting paper. To mention some of them, it is proved that, if an \(L_p(\mu)\) space is uniformly micro-semitransitive, then either \(p=2\) or the space is one-dimensional, proving that micro-semitransitivity does not imply transitivity. Also, it is proved that a Banach space is uniformly micro-semitransitive (respectively, micro-transitive) if and only if its dual is.