 2-summing operator

A bounded linear operator $T:E\to F$ is 2-summing if ${\sum }_j\Vert T{x}_j{\Vert }^2\le C^2{\sup }_{\varphi \in B_{E^{\ast }}}{\sum }_j|\varphi (x_j){|}^2$ for every finite family; ${\pi }_2(T)$ is the least $C$. For operators between Hilbert spaces, this is equivalent to being a Hilbert-Schmidt operator, with ${\pi }_2(T)=\Vert T{\Vert }_{\mathrm{HS}}$. The upper bound follows by applying the Hilbert-Schmidt norm ideal inequality to the column operator of the family; testing finite orthonormal families gives the reverse bound.