Roundness properties of Banach spaces

Abstract

The maximal roundness of a metric space is a quantity that arose in the study of embeddings and renormings. In the setting of Banach spaces, it was shown by Enflo that roundness takes on a much simpler form. In this paper we provide simple computations of the roundness of many standard Banach spaces, such as ℓp, the Lebesgue-Bochner spaces ℓp(ℓq) and the Schatten ideals Sp. We also introduce a property that is dual to that of roundness, which we call coroundness, and make explicit the relation of these properties to the geometric concepts of smoothness and convexity of Banach spaces. Building off the work of Enflo, we are then able to provide multiple non-trivial equivalent conditions for a Banach space to possess maximal roundness greater than 1. Using these conditions, we are able to conclude that certain Orlicz spaces possess non-trivial values of roundness and coroundness. Finally, we also use these conditions to provide an explicit example of a 2-dimensional Banach space whose maximal roundness is not equal to that of its dual.