Breakthrough Tracker record

Two preprints claim to settle Banach’s isometric conjecture over real, complex and quaternionic spaces

Xinbao Lu and Kaiwen Yang claim the remaining real odd-dimensional cases, while Antonio Acuaviva and Tomasz Kania claim the remaining complex cases and a quaternionic counterpart. Together with earlier results, the two first-version preprints would settle the classical finite-dimensional real and complex isometric-subspace conjectures.

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Stable ID
math-banach-isometric-conjecture-real-case-2026
Revision
math-banach-isometric-conjecture-real-case-2026.v2
Field
Mathematics · Functional analysis, convex geometry and topology
Evidence
Tier 1 · Peer reviewed: No
Record state
Provisional · Provisional claimed proof
Last checked

AI role

Lu and Yang report extensive interactions with ChatGPT 5.5 Pro and 5.6 Pro after reducing the problem to a key theorem. Acuaviva and Kania report using ChatGPT 5.6 Sol for technical details and extensions. Both groups state that the human authors checked and own the results.

Record details

Problem or result
Banach’s 1932 isometric-subspace conjecture over real and complex scalars, plus a quaternionic analogue
Authors
Xinbao Lu and Kaiwen Yang; Antonio Acuaviva and Tomasz Kania
Institutions
Tongji University; Lancaster University; Czech Academy of Sciences and Jagiellonian University
Result date
Real-case preprint submitted August 13 and revised August 31; complex/quaternionic preprint submitted August 18, 2026

Why it matters

If both arguments hold, they close the remaining finite-dimensional cases of a 94-year-old problem connecting normed spaces, ellipsoids, bundle topology and Brouwer degree theory, and extend the mechanism to quaternionic spaces.

Limits

The real-case manuscript is now version 2, with a substantially expanded and restructured proof but an unchanged theorem claim. Both manuscripts remain non-peer-reviewed preprints. No independent specialist correctness assessment or formal proof was located, and the complex/quaternionic paper adapts the real-case mechanism rather than independently confirming it.

Sources

  1. Primary: Xinbao Lu and Kaiwen Yang, A solution to Banach’s isometric conjecture
  2. Primary: Antonio Acuaviva and Tomasz Kania, Banach’s Isometric Conjecture over the Complex Field

Correction and revision history

  1. 2026-08-22 — Added after primary-source, scope, status, AI-role and limitation review.
  2. 2026-09-01 — Rechecked real-case version 2, which expands and restructures the proof while retaining the same theorem claim; provisional status retained.

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