Abstract: | In this paper we develop the theory of Fourier multiplier operators \(T_{m}:L^{p}({\mathbb R}^{d};X)\rightarrow L^{q}({\mathbb R}^{d};Y)\), for Banach spaces X and Y, \(1\le p\le q\le \infty \) and \(m:{\mathbb R}^d\rightarrow \mathcal {L}(X,Y)\) an operator-valued symbol. The case \(p=q\) has been studied extensively since the 1980s, but far less is known for \(p<q\). In the scalar setting one can deduce results for \(p<q\) from the case \(p=q\). However, in the vector-valued setting this leads to restrictions both on the smoothness of the multiplier and on the class of Banach spaces. For example, one often needs that X and Y are UMD spaces and that m satisfies a smoothness condition. We show that for \(p<q\) other geometric conditions on X and Y, such as the notions of type and cotype, can be used to study Fourier multipliers. Moreover, we obtain boundedness results for \(T_m\) without any smoothness properties of m. Under smoothness conditions the boundedness results can be extrapolated to other values of p and q as long as \(\tfrac{1}{p}-\tfrac{1}{q}\) remains constant. |