Operators Having Weakly Precompact Adjoints (Q4024474)

An operator \(T: X\to Y\) is said to be weakly precompact (wpc) if \(T(B_ X)\) is weakly precompact when \(B_ X\) is the unit ball of \(X\) (\(X\), \(Y\) are real Banach spaces). From Rosenthal's fundamental \(\ell^ 1\)-theorem it follows that an operator \(T: X\to Y\) is wpc if and only if \(T|_ Z\) is not an isomorphism for any subspace \(Z\) of \(X\) isomorphic to \(\ell^ 1\). Among the several results of this paper are: Theorem 1. If \(T^*\) is wpc and \(V\) is a Banach space of \(X\) such that the restriction of \(T\) to \(V\) is an isomorphism, then \(V^*\) does not contain \(\ell^ 1\). Proposition 8. The set \(\{T: X\to Y\mid T^*\) is wpc\} is a closed separably determined operator ideal.