Even infinite-dimensional real Banach spaces

This article is a continuation of a paper of the first author [V. Ferenczi, Uniqueness of complex structure and real hereditarily indecomposable Banach spaces, Adv. Math. 213 (1) (2007) 462–488] about complex structures on real Banach spaces. We define a notion of even infinite-dimensional real Banach space, and prove that there exist even spaces, including HI or unconditional examples from [V. Ferenczi, Uniqueness of complex structure and real hereditarily indecomposable Banach spaces, Adv. Math. 213 (1) (2007) 462–488] and C(K) examples due to Plebanek [G. Plebanek, A construction of a Banach space C(K) with few operators, Topology Appl. 143 (2004) 217–239]. We extend results of [V. Ferenczi, Uniqueness of complex structure and real hereditarily indecomposable Banach spaces, Adv. Math. 213 (1) (2007) 462–488] relating the set of complex structures up to isomorphism on a real space to a group associated to inessential operators on that space, and give characterizations of even spaces in terms of this group. We also generalize results of [V. Ferenczi, Uniqueness of complex structure and real hereditarily indecomposable Banach spaces, Adv. Math. 213 (1) (2007) 462–488] about totally incomparable complex structures to essentially incomparable complex structures, while showing that the complex version of a space defined by S. Argyros and A. Manoussakis [S. Argyros, A. Manoussakis, An indecomposable and unconditionally saturated Banach space, Studia Math. 159 (1) (2003) 1–32] provides examples of essentially incomparable complex structures which are not totally incomparable.