Schatten-von Neumann classes of multilinear forms

The authors establish a number of results concerning normed ideals of multilinear forms in Banach spaces which extend the theory of trace ideals of operators on Hilbert space to such multilinear forms. For example, it is shown that the dual of the space of compact forms is the space of nuclear forms, while the second dual is the space of bounded forms. Moreover, a direct analogue of the Schatten p-ideals of operators on Hilbert space is defined using interpolation techniques and a normal form for compact forms is introduced.