Some sets obeying harmonic synthesis

LetX be a (not necessarily closed) subspace of the dual spaceB ^* of a separable Banach spaceB. LetX ₁ denote the set of all weak ^* limits of sequences inX. DefineX _a , for every ordinal numbera, by the inductive rule:X _a = (U _{b < a} X _b ) ₁ .There is always a countable ordinala such thatX _a is the weak ^* closure ofX; the first sucha is called theorder ofX inB ^* . LetE be a closed subset of a locally compact abelian group. LetPM(E) be the set of pseudomeasures, andM(E) the set of measures, whose supports are contained inE. The setE obeys synthesis if and only ifM(E) is weak ^* dense inPM(E). Varopoulos constructed an example in which the order ofM(E) is 2. The authors construct, for every countable ordinala, a setE inR that obeys synthesis, and such that the order ofM(E) inPM(E) isa. This work was done in Jerusalem, when the second-named author was a visitor at the Institute of Mathematics of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, with the support of an NSF International Travel Grant and of NSF Grant GP33583.