On the constants for some fractional Gagliardo-Nirenberg and Sobolev inequalities

TL;DR

This paper reviews and extends the understanding of sharp constants in fractional Gagliardo-Nirenberg and Sobolev inequalities, providing explicit formulas, bounds, and relations between these inequalities in various fractional and integer cases.

Contribution

It introduces new bounds for the sharp constants in fractional inequalities and explicitly characterizes maximizers in special cases, connecting these results with hypergeometric functions.

Findings

Explicit formulas for maximizers in special cases

New upper bounds for sharp constants in fractional inequalities

Narrow intervals for the sharp constants based on combined bounds

Abstract

We consider the inequalities of Gagliardo-Nirenberg and Sobolev in R^d, formulated in terms of the Laplacian Delta and of the fractional powers D^n := (-Delta)^(n/2) with real n >= 0; we review known facts and present novel results in this area. After illustrating the equivalence between these two inequalities and the relations between the corresponding sharp constants and maximizers, we focus the attention on the L^2 case where, for all sufficiently regular f : R^d -> C, the norm || D^j f||_{L^r} is bounded in terms of || f ||_{L^2} and || D^n f ||_{L^2} for 1/r = 1/2 - (theta n - j)/d, and suitable values of j,n,theta (with j,n possibly noninteger). In the special cases theta = 1 and theta = j/n + d/2 n (i.e., r = + infinity), related to previous results of Lieb and Ilyin, the sharp constants and the maximizers can be found explicitly; we point out that the maximizers can be expressed in terms of hypergeometric, Fox and Meijer functions. For the general L^2 case, we present two kinds of upper bounds on the sharp constants: the first kind is suggested by the literature, the second one is an alternative proposal of ours, often more precise than the first one. We also derive two kinds of lower bounds. Combining all the available upper and lower bounds, the Gagliardo-Nirenberg and Sobolev sharp constants are confined to quite narrow intervals. Several examples are given.