The isomorphism class of \(c_0\) is not Borel (Q2421894)

This remarkable article provides a complete solution to a delicate problem, which was pending for about twenty years. We recall that the collection of separable Banach spaces can be equipped, in a rather canonical way, with a structure of a standard Borel space. Therefore it makes sense to speak about Borel or non-Borel families of Banach spaces, and in particular to investigate the complexity of the isomorphism class \( \langle X \rangle\) of a given Banach space \(X\). When this class is not Borel, it follows that there is no hope to find a constructive way to decide if a given Banach space is isomorphic to \(X\). Kwapień's theorem [\textit{S. Kwapień}, Stud. Math. 44, 583--595 (1972; Zbl 0256.46024)] easily shows that \(\langle l_2\rangle\) is Borel, and for a while it was the only known Borel class until it was observed by the reviewer [J. Nonlinear Convex Anal. 18, No. 2, 231--240 (2017; Zbl 1435.46005)] that certain asymptotically Hilbertian spaces have Borel classes although they are not isomorphic to \( l_2 \), and also that the classes \(\langle l_p\rangle\) are Borel when \(1< p< \infty\). However, the case of \(c_0\) remained elusive, and somewhat crucial since several good characterizations of \(c_0\) were conjectured. The present work provides a final answer since it shows that \(\langle c_0 \rangle\) is not Borel. The proof is quite involved and uses Tsirelson-like spaces and the Bourgain-Delbaen construction of \(l_1\)-preduals. A fair number of interesting corollaries follow from the main result. For instance, having an unconditional basis, or being a subspace of a space with an unconditional basis, is a non-Borel condition. However, it is not known if having a Schauder basis is a Borel condition. A negative answer to this last question would immediately imply the known (but difficult) result, due to \textit{S. J. Szarek} [Acta Math. 159, 81--98 (1987; Zbl 0637.46013)], of the existence of a space with the Bounded Approximation Property but without Schauder basis.