On various types of density of numerical radius attaining operators

Abstract: In this paper, we are interested in studying two properties related to the denseness of the operators which attain their numerical radius: the Bishop-Phelps-Bollob\'as point and operator properties for numerical radius (BPBpp-nu and BPBop-nu, respectively). We prove that every Banach space with micro-transitive norm and second numerical index strictly positive satisfy the BPBpp-nu and that, if the numerical index of $X$ is 1, only one-dimensional spaces enjoy it. On the other hand, we show that the BPBop-nu is a very restrictive property: under some general assumptions, it holds only for one-dimensional spaces. We also consider two weaker properties, the local versions of BPBpp-nu and BPBop-nu, where the $\eta$ which appears in their definition does not depend just on $\epsilon > 0$ but also on a state $(x, x^*)$ or on a numerical radius one operator $T$. We address the relation between the local BPBpp-nu and the strong subdifferentiability of the norm of the space $X$. We show that finite dimensional spaces and $c_0$ are examples of Banach spaces satisfying the local BPBpp-nu, and we exhibit an example of a Banach space with strongly subdifferentiable norm failing it. We finish the paper by showing that finite dimensional spaces satisfy the local BPBop-nu and that, if $X$ has strictly positive numerical index and has the approximation property, this property is equivalent to finite dimensionality.