Separably injective Banach spaces (Q5920694)

Arguably the most important extension theorem in analysis, the Hahn-Banach theorem, asserts that a bounded linear functional defined on a subspace of a normed space into the real numbers can be extended to a linear functional defined on the whole space, with the same norm. Natural questions are: what properties of the real numbers make the proof work, and which Banach spaces can replace the reals as the target space? Spaces sharing the latter property are called injective, and a routine corollary is that \(\ell_\infty\) is one of them. The injective spaces are known to include the space \(C(K)\) of continuous functions on any extremally disconnected compact Hausdorff space \(K\). It is well known that \(c_0\) is not injective, as it is not complemented in \(\ell_\infty\). On the other hand, Sobczyk's theorem informs us that \(c_0\) is 2-complemented in every separable space containing it. Accordingly, a Banach space \(E\) is called separably injective if for every separable Banach space \(X\) and every subspace \(Y\) of \(X\), every bounded linear operator \(T:Y\to E\) admits a bounded extension \(\tilde T:X\to E\). This is quantified by saying that \(E\) is \(\lambda\)-separably injective if in addition the norm of the extension is dominated by \(\lambda\) times the norm of the initial operator. The authors of this monograph have distilled the work of a number of earlier and recent authors, and their own substantial contributions, to elucidate the substantial theory which now flows from this concept. We will just mention a few of the highlights. First of all, \(c_0\) is (up to isomorphism) the only separable separably injective Banach space; thus separable injectivity is of greater interest for non-separable Banach spaces. Moreover, there does not exist an infinite-dimensional separable, \(\lambda\)-separably injective Banach space for any \(\lambda<2\). As might be expected, \(c_0\)-sums of separably injective spaces are also separably injective, and so an example which is neither separable nor injective is \(c_0(\Gamma)\), for \(\Gamma\) uncountable. Twisted sums of separably injective spaces are also separably injective, thus further examples include \(C(K)\) spaces in the case \(K\) has finite height. If a \(C(K)\) space is \(\lambda\)-separably injective for some \(\lambda<2\), then it is 1-separably injective; the corresponding problem for injective spaces remains open. There also exists a 1-separably injective space not isomorphic to any complemented subspace of any \(C(K)\) space. For an uncountable set \(\Gamma\), the Banach space \(\ell^c_\infty(\Gamma)\), i.e., the subspace of \(\ell_\infty(\Gamma)\) of functions with countable support, is shown to be 1-separably injective and not isometric to any \(C(K)\) space (in particular, not 1-injective). In fact, \(\ell^c_\infty(\Gamma)\) enjoys the following stronger property: A Banach space \(E\) is called universally (\(\lambda\)-)separably injective if for every separable subspace \(Y\) of a Banach space \(X\), every bounded linear operator \(T:Y\to E\) admits an extension \(X\to E\) (whose norm is no greater than \(\lambda\|T\|\)). An interesting characterization is that a Banach space \(E\) is universally separably injective if and only if every separable subspace is contained inside a copy of \(\ell_\infty\) inside \(E\). Another interesting example of a universally separably injective space which is not injective is \(\ell_\infty/c_0\). Universally separably injective spaces are shown to be separably automorphic, i.e., an isomorphism between two separable subspaces of such a space can be extended to an automorphism of the whole space. If an ultraproduct of a family of Banach spaces happens to be an \(\mathcal{L}_\infty\) space, then it is universally separably injective. It is known that an ultraproduct cannot be injective, except in degenerate cases. Work of \textit{J. Lindenstrauss} [Proc. Amer. Math. Soc. 15, 218--225 (1964; Zbl 0132.09901)] implies that, under the continuum hypothesis, the classes of 1-separably injective and universally 1-separably injective coincide. It is shown here that this does not hold in different models of set theory: assuming Martin's axiom and the negation of the continuum hypothesis, there is a 1-separably injective space which is not universally 1-separably injective. However, it is unknown whether this space is universally \(\lambda\)-separably injective for some \(\lambda>1\). Let us mention a recent update: the authors \textit{A. Avilés} et al. [Adv. Math. 318, 737--747 (2017; Zbl 1457.46020)] have shown, assuming the continuum hypothesis, that being universally separably injective is not a 3-space property, i.e., it needs not pass to twisted sums. Other topics which relate to separable injectivity include spaces of universal disposition, Grothendieck spaces, Pełczyński's property (V) and the analogous properties for density characters higher than separability. This book is a valuable contribution to the literature on Banach spaces.