Daugavet property and separability in Banach spaces

Abstract

We give a characterization of the separable Banach spaces with the Daugavet property which is applied to study the Daugavet property in the projective tensor product of an $L$-embedded space with another nonzero Banach space. The former characterization also motivates the introduction and short study of two indices related to the Daugavet property.