M. Schechter introduced an operational quantity characterizing strictly singular operators as follows:
For an operator $T:X\rightarrow Y$, we set $$\tau(T)=\sup_{M}\inf_{x\in S_{M}}\|Tx\|,$$ where $M$ represent an infinite-dimensional closed subspace of $X$.
If $A$ and $B$ are two nonempty subsets of a Banach space $X$, we set $$d(A,B)=\inf\{\|a-b\|:a\in A,b\in B\},$$$$\widehat{d}(A,B)=\sup\{d(a,B):a\in A\}.$$ Thus, $d(A,B)$ is the ordinary distance between $A$ and $B$, and $\widehat{d}(A,B)$ is the non-symmetrized Hausdorff distance from $A$ to $B$.
Let $A$ be a bounded subset of a Banach space $X$. The Hausdorff measure of non-compactness of $A$ is defined by $\chi(A)=\inf\{\widehat{d}(A,F):F\subset X$ finite subset $\}$.
Then $\chi(A)=0$ if and only if $A$ is relatively norm compact. For an operator $T: X\rightarrow Y$, $\chi(T)$ will denote $\chi(TB_{X})$.
I prove the following result:
Theorem. Let $T:X\rightarrow Y$ be an operator. Then $$\tau(T)\leq 2\chi(T).$$
I have two questions about this theorem.
Question 1. Is this theorem new? I am not sure that this theorem has already appeared somewhere.
Question 2. Is the constant 2 in the theorem optimal?
Thank you!