Weak compactness in Lipschitz-free spaces over superreflexive spaces

Abstract

We show that the Lipschitz-free space $\mathcal{F}(X)$ over a superreflexive Banach space $X$ has the property that every weakly precompact subset of $\mathcal{F}(X)$ is relatively super weakly compact, showing that this space "behaves like $L_1$" in this context. As consequences we show that $\mathcal{F}(X)$ enjoys the weak Banach-Saks property and that every subspace of $\mathcal{F}(X)$ with nontrivial type is superreflexive. Further, weakly compact subsets of $\mathcal{F}(X)$ are super weakly compact and hence have many strong properties. To prove the result, we use a modification of the proof of weak sequential completeness of $\mathcal{F}(X)$ by Kochanek and Pernecká and an appropriate version of compact reduction in the spirit of Aliaga, Noûs, Petitjean and Procházka.