MAXIMAL IDEALS IN THE ALGEBRA OF OPERATORS ON CERTAIN BANACH SPACES (Q4787802)

Given a Banach space \(E\), it is often impossible to determine the closed or even just the maximal ideals of \({\mathcal B}(E)\). In the paper under review, the author investigates certain Banach spaces \(E\) for which the maximal ideals of \({\mathcal B}(E)\) can be determined. First, for \(1 < p < \infty\), he shows that \({\mathcal B}(J_p)\), where \(J_p\) is the \(p\)-th James space, has only one maximal ideal , namely the weakly compact operators. Secondly, he shows that the ideal of strictly singular operators on \(E\) is the only maximal ideal in \({\mathcal B}(E)\) whenver \(E\) is hereditarily indecomposable. Thirdly, it is shown that \({\mathcal B}(E)\) has \(2^{2^{\aleph_0}}\) distinct maximal ideals if \(E\) is the space constructed by Gowers to solve the hyperplane problem. There are many other results in this paper concerning maximal or, more generally, closed ideals in \({\mathcal B}(E)\) for various Banach spaces \(E\).