Large subspaces ofl ∞ n and estimates of the gordon-lewis constantand estimates of the gordon-lewis constant

Lower bounds are obtained for thegl constants and hence also for the unconditional basis constants of subspaces of finite dimensional Banach spaces. Sharp results are obtained for subspaces ofl _∞ ⁿ , while in the general case thegl constants of “random large” subspaces are related to the distance of “random large” subspaces to Euclidean spaces. In addition, a new isometric characterization ofl _∞ ⁿ is given, some new information is obtained concerningp-absolutely summing operators, and it is proved that every Banach space of dimensionn contains a subspace whose projection constant is of ordern ^1/2. The research for this paper was begun while both authors were guests of the Mittag-Leffler Institute. Supported in part by NSF-MCS 79-03042.