Complex Interpolation between Hilbert, Banach and Operator Spaces

Motivated by a question of Vincent Lafforgue, the author studies the Banach spaces $X$ satisfying the following property: there is a function $\varepsilon\to \Delta_X(\varepsilon)$ tending to zero with $\varepsilon>0$ such that every operator $T\colon \ L_2\to L_2$ with $\T\\le \varepsilon$ that is simultaneously contractive (i.e., of norm $\le 1$) on $L_1$ and on $L_\infty$ must be of norm $\le \Delta_X(\varepsilon)$ on $L_2(X)$. The author shows that $\Delta_X(\varepsilon) \in O(\varepsilon^\alpha)$ for some $\alpha>0$ iff $X$ is isomorphic to a quotient of a subspace of an ultraproduct of $\theta$-Hilbertian spaces for some $\theta>0$ (see Corollary 6.7), where $\theta$-Hilbertian is meant in a slightly more general sense than in the author's earlier paper (1979).