Uniformly factoring weakly compact operators and parametrised dualisation

Abstract

Abstract This article deals with the problem of when, given a collection $\mathcal {C}$ of weakly compact operators between separable Banach spaces, there exists a separable reflexive Banach space Z with a Schauder basis so that every element in $\mathcal {C}$ factors through Z (or through a subspace of Z). In particular, we show that there exists a reflexive space Z with a Schauder basis so that for each separable Banach space X, each weakly compact operator from X to $L_1[0,1]$ factors through Z. We also prove the following descriptive set theoretical result: Let $\mathcal {L}$ be the standard Borel space of bounded operators between separable Banach spaces. We show that if $\mathcal {B}$ is a Borel subset of weakly compact operators between Banach spaces with separable duals, then for $A \in \mathcal {B}$ , the assignment $A \to A^*$ can be realised by a Borel map $\mathcal {B}\to \mathcal {L}$ .