Ergodic Banach spaces (Q2484382)

The authors use descriptive set theory to isomorphically classify the subspaces of a Banach space. It follows from the solution of the homogeneous Banach space problem that a Banach space which is not isomorphic to \(\ell_2\) must contain at least two non-isomorphic (infinite-dimensional) subspaces. So a natural question, posed to the authors by G. Godefroy, is: how many non-isomorphic subspaces must a given Banach space contain? Except for \(\ell_2\), no example of a space with only finitely or countably many isomorphism classes of subspaces is known. In this paper, the authors study the possibility, for a given Banach space, to classify the analytic equivalence relations of isomorphisms on its subspaces, up to Borel reducibility. The work relies on a version of Gowers's game and Gowers's ``trichotomy'' theorem: Every Banach space either contains a hereditarily indecomposable subspace, a subspace with an unconditional basis such that no disjointly supported block-subspaces are isomorphic, or a subspace with an unconditional basis which is quasi-minimal [\textit{W. T. Gowers}, Ann. Math. (2) 156, No. 3, 797--833 (2002; Zbl 1030.46005)]. Using this, the authors show that for every Banach space which does not contain a minimal subspace (that is, a subspace which embeds in any of its own subspaces), there is a perfect set of subspaces such that two of them do not both embed into each other; in particular, this space contains a continuum of non-isomorphic subspaces. An important notion for their purpose is defined by the authors: a Banach space is ergodic if the minimal non-smooth Borel equivalence relation \(E_0\) Borel reduces to isomorphism on subspaces (the set of closed linear subspaces being equipped with its Effros--Borel structure). In Theorem~12, the authors show that every Banach space is either ergodic or contains a subspace with an unconditional basis which is complementably universal for the family of its block-subspaces. They also show that every Banach space \(X\) with an unconditional basis, such that every block-subspace of \(X\) is complemented, is asymptotically \(c_0\) or \(\ell_p\), \(1\leq p<+\infty\). Note that at the end of the paper, it is announced that the first author and \textit{E. M. Galego} in [``Some equivalence relations which are Borel reducible to isomorphism between separable Banach spaces'' (Preprint) (2004; arXiv:math.FA/0406477), have proven that \(c_0\) and \(\ell_p\), \(1\leq p<2\), are ergodic. The case of \(\ell_p\) for \(p>2\) remains open, and the conjecture is that \(\ell_2\) is the only non-ergodic Banach space.