Norm attaining operators which satisfy a Bollob\'as type theorem

Abstract

In this paper, we are interested in studying the set $\mathcal{A}_{\|\cdot\|}(X, Y)$ of all norm-attaining operators $T$ from $X$ into $Y$ satisfying the following: given $\epsilon>0$, there exists $\eta$ such that if $\|Tx\| > 1 - \eta$, then there is $x_0$ such that $\| x_0 - x\| < \epsilon$ and $T$ itself attains its norm at $x_0$. We show that every norm one functional on $c_0$ which attains its norm belongs to $\mathcal{A}_{\|\cdot\|}(c_0, \mathbb{K})$. Also, we prove that the analogous result holds neither for $\mathcal{A}_{\|\cdot\|}(\ell_1, \mathbb{K})$ nor $\mathcal{A}_{\|\cdot\|}(\ell_{\infty}, \mathbb{K})$. Under some assumptions, we show that the sphere of the compact operators belongs to $\mathcal{A}_{\|\cdot\|}(X, Y)$ and that this is no longer true when some of these hypotheses are dropped. The analogous set $\mathcal{A}_{nu}(X)$ for numerical radius of an operator instead of its norm is also defined and studied. We present a complete characterization for the diagonal operators which belong to the sets $\mathcal{A}_{\| \cdot \|}(X, X)$ and $\mathcal{A}_{nu}(X)$ when $X=c_0$ or $\ell_p$. As a consequence, we get that the canonical projections $P_N$ on these spaces belong to our sets. We give examples of operators on infinite dimensional Banach spaces which belong to $\mathcal{A}_{\| \cdot \|}(X, X)$ but not to $\mathcal{A}_{nu}(X)$ and vice-versa. Finally, we establish some techniques which allow us to connect both sets by using direct sums.