Unconditional almost squareness and applications to spaces of Lipschitz functions (Q517941)

Let us take the following perspective as a starting point: Find a useful condition that strictly includes non-reflexive \(M\)-embedded Banach spaces but still excludes the possibility of being a dual space. A candidate is the property of being almost square (ASQ). This means that every finite subset of \(S_X\) has a \(c_0\)-orthogonal element (whenever \((x_i)_{i=1}^N\subset S_X\) and \(\varepsilon>0\), there exists \(y\in S_X\) with \(\|x_i-y\|<1+\varepsilon\)). See [\textit{T. A. Abrahamsen} et al., J. Math. Anal. Appl. 434, No. 2, 1549--1565 (2016; Zbl 1335.46006)] for information on such spaces. However, it is still just a hypothesis that ASQ-spaces cannot be dual (note that this is so in the separable case since separable dual spaces have the RNP). In the paper under review, the authors introduce an unconditional version of ASQ (UASQ) and prove that separable ASQ-spaces are automatically UASQ (Corollary 2.4) and that UASQ-spaces are never dual spaces (Theorem 2.5). They leave as an open question whether ASQ and UASQ are equivalent in general, at least for dual spaces (Question 6.1). Recall that the Lipschitz-free space \(\mathcal{F}(M)\) of a metric space \(M\) with a distinguished point is a dual space if \(M\) is compact or even proper (closed balls in \(M\) are compact). In both cases, the described preduals \(\mathrm{lip(M)}\) and \(S(M)\) are \(M\)-embedded non-reflexive (and thus not dual spaces). The spaces \(\mathrm{lip(M)}\) and their subspace \(S(M)\) have meaning in the general case (there are even vector-valued natural generalizations). In Theorem 3.6, the authors establish that \(\mathrm{lip(M)}\) and \(S(M)\) are UASQ (and so still not dual) when \(M\) is a locally compact, totally disconnected space which is not uniformly discrete. For the uniformly discrete case it is shown in Proposition 4.1 that, for bounded uniformly discrete \(M\) (the dual space), \(\mathrm{lip(M)}\) is never ASQ. However (Proposition 4.4), for an unbounded uniformly discrete \(M\), \(S(M)\) is UASQ. Section 5 of this fine paper is devoted to extensions of results to the vector-valued cases of \(\mathrm{lip(M)}\) and \(S(M)\).