On weak compactness in projective tensor products

Abstract: We study the property of being strongly weakly compactly generated (and some relatives) in projective tensor products of Banach spaces. Our main result is as follows. Let $1<p,q<\infty$ be such that $1/p+1/q\geq 1$. Let $X$ (resp., $Y$) be a Banach space with a countable unconditional finite-dimensional Schauder decomposition having a disjoint lower $p$-estimate (resp., $q$-estimate). If $X$ and $Y$ are strongly weakly compactly generated, then so is its projective tensor product $X \widehat{\otimes}_\pi Y$.