Continuous operators from spaces of Lipschitz functions

Abstract

We study the existence of continuous (linear) operators from the Banach spaces $\mbox{Lip}_0(M)$ of Lipschitz functions on infinite metric spaces $M$ vanishing at a distinguished point and from their predual spaces $\mathcal{F}(M)$ onto certain Banach spaces, including $C(K)$-spaces and the spaces $c_0$ and $\ell_1$. For pairs of spaces $\mbox{Lip}_0(M)$ and $C(K)$ we prove that if they are endowed with topologies weaker than the norm topology, then usually no continuous (linear or not) surjection exists between those spaces. It is also showed that if a metric space $M$ contains a bilipschitz copy of the unit sphere $S_{c_0}$ of the space $c_0$, then $\mbox{Lip}_0(M)$ admits a continuous operator onto $\ell_1$ and hence onto $c_0$. Using this, we provide several conditions for a space $M$ implying that $\mbox{Lip}_0(M)$ is not a Grothendieck space. Finally, we obtain a new characterization of the Schur property for Lipschitz-free spaces: a space $\mathcal{F}(M)$ has the Schur property if and only if for every complete discrete metric space $N$ with cardinality $d(M)$ the spaces $\mathcal{F}(M)$ and $\mathcal{F}(N)$ are weakly sequentially homeomorphic.