Approximation and Schur properties for Lipschitz free spaces over compact metric spaces (Q267512)

Let \(M\) be a metric space equipped for convenience with a distinguished point \(0\). The natural predual of the space of real-valued Lipschitz functions on \(M\) which vanish at \(0\) is called the Lipschitz free space over \(M\). Lipschitz free spaces have been intensively investigated in the last fifteen years. It was shown in particular that they could fail Grothendieck's approximation property, even when \(M\) is a compact metric space. The first examples, however, where infinite-dimensional compact convex sets, and this led to the question to know if connectedness played a role in this context. This question is answered in the present paper, where it is shown that any separable Banach space \(X\) is isomorphic to a complemented subspace of a free space over a compact \(K_X\) which is homeomorphic to the Cantor set. In particular, there exists \(L\) homeomorphic to the Cantor set such that the free space over \(L\) fails the approximation property. This leads to wondering if the failure of the approximation property for the free space is a generic phenomenon in the Baire category sense, for distances on the Cantor set which induce the natural topology. In the present paper, it is also shown that the free space over a countable compact space has the Schur property.