Weakly sequentially continuous differentiable mappings

It is well known that a (linear) operator between Banach spaces is completely continuous if and only if its adjoint takes bounded subsets of Y^* into uniformly completely continuous subsets, often called (L)-subsets, of X^*. We give similar results for differentiable mappings. More precisely, if UX is an open convex subset, let be a differentiable mapping whose derivative is uniformly continuous on U-bounded subsets. We prove that f takes weak Cauchy U-bounded sequences into convergent sequences if and only if f^′ takes Rosenthal U-bounded subsets of U into uniformly completely continuous subsets of . As a consequence, we extend a result of P. Hájek and answer a question raised by R. Deville and E. Matheron. We derive differentiable characterizations of Banach spaces not containing ℓ₁ and of Banach spaces without the Schur property containing a copy of ℓ₁. Analogous results are given for differentiable mappings taking weakly convergent U-bounded sequences into convergent sequences. Finally, we show that if X has the hereditary Dunford–Pettis property, then every differentiable function as above is locally weakly sequentially continuous.