On a generalized Mazur-Ulam question: Extension of isometries between unit spheres of Banach spaces

We call a Banach space X admitting the Mazur-Ulam property (MUP) provided that for any Banach space Y, if f is an onto isometry between the two unit spheres of X and V. then it is the restriction of a linear isometry between the two spaces. A generalized Mazur-Ulam question is whether every Banach space admits the MUP. In this paper, we show first that the question has an affirmative answer for a general class of Banach spaces, namely, somewhere-flat spaces. As their immediate consequences, we obtain on the one hand that the question has an approximately positive answer: Given epsilon > 0, every Banach space X admits a (1 + epsilon)-equivalent norm such that X has the MUP; on the other hand, polyhedral spaces, CL-spaces admitting a smooth point (in particular, separable CL-spaces) have the MUP. (C) 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.