Daugavet property and separability in Banach spaces

Abstract: We give a characterisation of the separable Banach spaces with the Daugavet property which is applied to study the Daugavet property in the projective tensor product of an $L$-embedded space with another non-zero Banach space. The former characterisation also motivates the introduction of two indices related to the Daugavet property and a short study of them.