Uniform Convexity in Factor and Conjugate Spaces

Abstract

In a recent series of short papers [2, 3, 41 I have been discussing the relationships of uniform convexity with certain other properties of normed vector spaces. In this paper I propose to discuss relationships between uniform convexity, factor spaces, and conjugate spaces. Because of the large number of special results which are needed for two dimensional spaces-and which are false in general-the paper will be divided into two parts: In Part I (??2-4) B is two dimensional; in Part II (??5-7) this restriction is removed and B may be any normed vector space. To recall the definition, B is said to be uniformly convex if there exists a function 6 such that 0 e, is a modulus of convexity for B. Note that if 51 is nowhere greater than 5, a modulus of convexity for B, then 5l is a modulus of convexity for B. Because of the pointwise nature of the definition of uniform convexity, it is clear that B is uniformly convex with modulus of convexity a if and only if all the two dimensional subspaces of B have the common modulus of convexity 6. One of the most useful results of this investigation (Theorem 5.5) is the complementary fact that B is uniformly convex if and only if all the two dimensional factor spaces of B have a common modulus of convexity. In the study of the effect of uniform convexity of B on the nature of the conjugate space B*, this result makes it possible to reduce the problem to the study of two dimensional spaces. In such a space B uniform convexity is equivalent to strict convexity: that is, a two (or finite) dimensional space is uniformly convex if and only if there does not exist a line segment of positive length all of whose points are of norm one. It has been observed [1, Footnote 13] that such a line segment on the unit sphere is equivalent to the existence of a sharp edge on the unit sphere in B*. The attempt to describe a sharp edge of the unit sphere in a finite dimensional space B in terms of the norm in that space leads to the condition that there exists a k > 0 such that for any e > 0 a pair of points bi and b2 exists such that II b -b2 11 k 11 bl-be 11 . Contradicting this suggests the following condition, a sort of dual concept to uniform convexity. A space B is said to be uniformly flattened if there exists a function v7 positive for 0 < e ? 2 such that lim.b.o 7(e) = 0 while (211 b + b2 11)/i b2 11 < 7(e) if J]b11 = JJ b1 = 1 and 11 bb2 ? || ; 375