New inequalities relating the norm $n(X)$ and the numerical radius $w(X)$ of invertible bounded linear Hilbert space operators were announced by Hosseini and Omidvar [‘Some inequalities for the numerical radius for Hilbert space operators’, Bull. Aust. Math. Soc.94 (2016), 489–496]. For example, they asserted that $w(AB)\leq$$2w(A)w(B)$ for invertible bounded linear Hilbert space operators $A$ and $B$. We identify implicit hypotheses used in their discovery. The inequalities and their proofs can be made good by adding the extra hypotheses which take the form $n(X^{-1})=n(X)^{-1}$. We give counterexamples in the absence of such additional hypotheses. Finally, we show that these hypotheses yield even stronger conclusions, for example, $w(AB)=w(A)w(B)$.

We introduce some new refinements of numerical radius inequalities for Hilbert space invertible operators. More precisely, we prove that if $T\in {\mathcal{B}}({\mathcal{H}})$ is an invertible operator, then $\Vert T\Vert \leq \sqrt{2}\unicode[STIX]{x1D714}(T)$.

We show that, in an inner product space $H$, the inequality

$$\begin{eqnarray}{\textstyle \frac{1}{2}}[\Vert x\Vert \,\Vert y\Vert +|\langle x,y\rangle |]\geq |\langle Px,y\rangle |\end{eqnarray}$$

$x,y$

$P:H\rightarrow H$

In this paper, we introduce the polynomial numerical index of order $k$ of a Banach space, generalizing to $k$-homogeneous polynomials the ‘classical’ numerical index defined by Lumer in the 1970s for linear operators. We also prove some results. Let $k$ be a positive integer. We then have the following:

(i) $n^{(k)}(C(K))=1$ for every scattered compact space $K$.

(ii) The inequality $n^{(k)}(E)\geq k^{k/(1-k)}$ for every complex Banach space $E$ and the constant $k^{k/(1-k)}$ is sharp.

(iii) The inequalities

$$ n^{(k)}(E)\leq n^{(k-1)}(E)\leq\frac{k^{(k+(1/(k-1)))}}{(k-1)^{k-1}}n^{(k)}(E) $$

for every Banach space $E$.

(iv) The relation between the polynomial numerical index of $c_0$, $l_1$, $l_{\infty}$ sums of Banach spaces and the infimum of the polynomial numerical indices of them.

(v) The relation between the polynomial numerical index of the space $C(K,E)$ and the polynomial numerical index of $E$.

(vi) The inequality $n^{(k)}(E^{**})\leq n^{(k)}(E)$ for every Banach space $E$.

Finally, some results about the numerical radius of multilinear maps and homogeneous polynomials on $C(K)$ and the disc algebra are given.

Every norm $\mathcal{V}$ on ${{\text{C}}^{\text{n}}}$ induces two norm numerical ranges on the algebra ${{M}_{n}}\,\text{of}\,\text{all}\,\text{n}\,\times \,\text{n}$ complex matrices, the spatial numerical range

$$W\left( A \right)=\left\{ {{x}^{*}}Ay:x,y\in {{\text{C}}^{n}},{{v}^{D}}\left( x \right)=v\left( y \right)={{x}^{*}}y=1 \right\},$$

where ${{\mathcal{V}}^{D}}$ is the norm dual to $\mathcal{V}$, and the algebra numerical range

$$V\left( A \right)=\left\{ f\left( A \right):f\in S \right\},$$

where $S$ is the set of states on the normed algebra ${{M}_{n}}$ under the operator norm induced by $\mathcal{V}$. For a symmetric norm $\mathcal{V}$, we identify all linear maps on ${{M}_{n}}$ that preserve either one of the two norm numerical ranges or the set of states or vector states. We also identify the numerical radius isometries, i.e., linear maps that preserve the (one) numerical radius induced by either numerical range. In particular, it is shown that if $\mathcal{V}$ is not the ${{\ell }_{1}},{{\ell }_{2}},\,\text{or}\,{{\ell }_{\infty }}$ norms, then the linear maps that preserve either numerical range or either set of states are “inner”, i.e., of the form $A\mapsto {{Q}^{*}}AQ$, where $Q$ is a product of a diagonal unitary matrix and a permutation matrix and the numerical radius isometries are unimodular scalar multiples of such inner maps. For the ${{\ell }_{1}}$ and the ${{\ell }_{\infty }}$ norms, the results are quite different.

We prove that the space $L_\infty(\mu,X)$ has the same numerical index as the Banach space $X$ for every $\sigma$-finite measure $\mu$. We also show that $L_\infty(\mu,X)$ has the Daugavet property if and only if $X$ has or $\mu$ is atomless.

AMS 2000 Mathematics subject classification: Primary 46B20; 47A12