Orbital and strongly orbital spaces (Q902135)

In this very interesting article, the author approaches in an unusual way the invariant subspace/subset property of a (countably infinite dimensional) topological vector space \(X\), i.e., the question whether every continuous linear operator \(T\in L(X)\) has a non-trivial closed \(T\)-invariant subspace/subset. The author introduces the notions of \textit{orbital} and \textit{strongly orbital}, resp., for a topological vector spaces \(X\) meaning that there are \(T\in L(X)\) and \(x\in X\) such that \(X\) equals the linear span of the orbit of \(x\) under \(T\) (\(X=\mathrm{span}(O(T,x)\), where \(O(T,x)=\{T^nx:\,n\in\mathbb{N}_0\}\)), resp., \(X=\mathrm{span}(O(T,x))\) for some \(x\in X\) for which \(O(T,x)\) is dense in \(X\). As a starting point, revealing the connection between the invariant subspace/subset property and the notions of (strong) orbitality, it is observed that strongly orbital topological vector spaces do not have the invariant subset property. For metrizable locally convex spaces \(X\) of countably infinite algebraic dimension it is shown that \(X\) is orbital if and only if \(X\) is strongly orbital if and only if \(X\) does not posses a closed infinite dimensional subspace \(Y\) isomorphic to a dense linear subspace of \(\omega=\mathbb{K}^\mathbb{N}\) such that \(X/Y\) is infinite dimensional and has a continuous norm. Moreover, it is shown that every metrizable locally convex space \(X\) of countably infinite algebraic dimension does not have the invariant subset property. Additionally, it is shown that there are complete locally convex spaces \(X\) of countably infinite algebraic dimension which do not have the invariant subspace property. Under the Continuum Hypothesis, it is even possible to achieve that \(X\) is strongly orbital and therefore does not have the invariant subset property. As a byproduct of his constructions, the author determines the number of isomorphism classes in the set of dense countably infinite dimensional subspaces of any given separable infinite dimensional Fréchet space.