We study the existence of a retraction from the dual space X∗ of a (real
or complex) Banach space X onto its unit ball BX∗ which is uniformly
continuous in norm topology and continuous in weak-∗ topology. Such a
retraction is called a uniformly simultaneously continuous retraction.
It is shown that if X has a normalized unconditional Schauder basis with
unconditional basis constant 1 and X∗ is uniformly monotone, then a
uniformly simultaneously continuous retraction from X∗ onto BX∗
exists. It is also shown that if {Xi} is a family of separable Banach
spaces whose duals are uniformly convex with moduli of convexity
δi(ε) such that infiδi(ε)>0 and X=[⨁Xi]c0 or X=[⨁Xi]ℓp
for 1≤p<∞, then a uniformly simultaneously continuous retraction
exists from X∗ onto BX∗.
The relation between the existence of a uniformly simultaneously continuous
retraction and the Bishsop-Phelps-Bollob\'as property for operators is
investigated and it is proved that the existence of a uniformly simultaneously
continuous retraction from X∗ onto its unit ball implies that a pair (X,C0(K)) has the Bishop-Phelps-Bollob\'as property for every locally compact
Hausdorff spaces K. As a corollary, we prove that (C0(S),C0(K)) has the
Bishop-Phelps-Bollob\'as property if C0(S) and C0(K) are the spaces of
all real-valued continuous functions vanishing at infinity on locally compact
metric space S and locally compact Hausdorff space K respectively.Comment: 15 page