On Kalton's interlaced graphs and nonlinear embeddings into dual Banach spaces

We study the nonlinear embeddability of Banach spaces and the equi-embeddability of the family of Kalton's interlaced graphs $([\mathbb N]^k,d_{\mathbb K})_k$ into dual spaces. Notably, we define and study a modification of Kalton's property $\mathcal Q$ that we call property $\mathcal{Q}_p$ (with $p \in (1,+\infty]$). We show that if $([\mathbb N]^k,d_{\mathbb K})_k$ equi-coarse Lipschitzly embeds into $X^*$, then the Szlenk index of $X$ is greater than $\omega$, and that this is optimal, i.e., there exists a separable dual space $Y^*$ that contains $([\mathbb N]^k,d_{\mathbb K})_k$ equi-Lipschitzly and so that $Y$ has Szlenk index $\omega^2$. We prove that $c_0$ does not coarse Lipschitzly embed into a separable dual space by a map with distortion strictly smaller than $\frac{3}{2}$. We also show that neither $c_0$ nor $L_1$ coarsely embeds into a separable dual by a weak-to-weak$^*$ sequentially continuous map.