Sobolev inequality


In mathematics, there is in mathematical analysis a class of Sobolev inequalities, relating norms including those of Sobolev spaces. These are used to prove the Sobolev embedding theorem, giving inclusions between certain Sobolev spaces, and the Rellich–Kondrachov theorem showing that under slightly stronger conditions some Sobolev spaces are compactly embedded in others. They are named after Sergei Lvovich Sobolev.

Sobolev embedding theorem

Let denote the Sobolev space consisting of all real-valued functions on whose weak derivatives up to order are functions in. Here is a non-negative integer and. The first part of the Sobolev embedding theorem states that if, and are two real numbers such that
,
then
and the embedding is continuous: for every, one has
, and
In the special case of and, Sobolev embedding gives
where is the Sobolev conjugate of, given by
and for every, one has
and
This special case of the Sobolev embedding is a direct consequence of the Gagliardo–Nirenberg–Sobolev inequality. The result should be interpreted as saying that if a function in has one derivative in, then itself has improved local behavior, meaning that it belongs to the space where. Thus, any local singularities in must be more mild than for a typical function in.
The second part of the Sobolev embedding theorem applies to embeddings in Hölder spaces. If and
with then one has the embedding
In other words, for every and, one has, in addition,
This part of the Sobolev embedding is a direct consequence of Morrey's inequality. Intuitively, this inclusion expresses the fact that the existence of sufficiently many weak derivatives implies some continuity of the classical derivatives. If then for every.
In particular, as long as, the embedding criterion will hold with and some positive value of. That is, for a function on, if has derivatives in and, then will be continuous.

Generalizations

The Sobolev embedding theorem holds for Sobolev spaces on other suitable domains. In particular, both parts of the Sobolev embedding hold when
If is a bounded open set in with continuous boundary, then is compactly embedded in .

Kondrachov embedding theorem

On a compact manifold with boundary, the Kondrachov embedding theorem states that if andthen the Sobolev embedding
is completely continuous. Note that the condition is just as in the first part of the Sobolev embedding theorem, with the equality replaced by an inequality, thus requiring a more regular space.

Gagliardo–Nirenberg–Sobolev inequality

Assume that is a continuously differentiable real-valued function on with compact support. Then for there is a constant depending only on and such that
with.
The case is due to Sobolev and the case to Gagliardo and Nirenberg independently. The Gagliardo–Nirenberg–Sobolev inequality implies directly the Sobolev embedding
The embeddings in other orders on are then obtained by suitable iteration.

Hardy–Littlewood–Sobolev lemma

Sobolev's original proof of the Sobolev embedding theorem relied on the following, sometimes known as the Hardy–Littlewood–Sobolev fractional integration theorem. An equivalent statement is known as the Sobolev lemma in. A proof is in.
Let and. Let be the Riesz potential on. Then, for defined by
there exists a constant depending only on such that
If, then one has two possible replacement estimates. The first is the more classical weak-type estimate:
where. Alternatively one has the estimatewhere is the vector-valued Riesz transform, cf. . The boundedness of the Riesz transforms implies that the latter inequality gives a unified way to write the family of inequalities for the Riesz potential.
The Hardy–Littlewood–Sobolev lemma implies the Sobolev embedding essentially by the relationship between the Riesz transforms and the Riesz potentials.

Morrey's inequality

Assume. Then there exists a constant, depending only on and, such that
for all, where
Thus if, then is in fact Hölder continuous of exponent, after possibly being redefined on a set of measure 0.
A similar result holds in a bounded domain with Lipschitz boundary. In this case,
where the constant depends now on and. This version of the inequality follows from the previous one by applying the norm-preserving extension of to. The inequality is named after Charles B. Morrey Jr.

General Sobolev inequalities

Let be a bounded open subset of, with a boundary.
Assume. Then we consider two cases:

or ,

In this case we conclude that, where
We have in addition the estimate
the constant depending only on, and.
Here, we conclude that belongs to a Hölder space, more precisely:
where
We have in addition the estimate
the constant depending only on, and. In particular, the condition guarantees that is continuous.

Case

If, then is a function of bounded mean oscillation and
for some constant depending only on. This estimate is a corollary of the Poincaré inequality.

Case

The prior result may be extended to arbitrary degree . For, if, then for every there exists a polynomial of degree such that
additionally, for any, we have
In particular this implies the inclusion embedding
for all exponents satisfying,.

Nash inequality

The Nash inequality, introduced by, states that there exists a constant, such that for all,
The inequality follows from basic properties of the Fourier transform. Indeed, integrating over the complement of the ball of radius,
because. On the other hand, one has
which, when integrated over the ball of radius gives
where is the volume of the -ball. Choosing to minimize the sum of and and applying Parseval's theorem:
gives the inequality.
In the special case of, the Nash inequality can be extended to the case, in which case it is a generalization of the Gagliardo-Nirenberg-Sobolev inequality. In fact, if is a bounded interval, then for all and all the following inequality holds
where:

Logarithmic Sobolev inequality

The simplest of the Sobolev embedding theorems, described above, states that if a function in has one derivative in, then itself is in, where
We can see that as tends to infinity, approaches. Thus, if the dimension of the space on which is defined is large, the improvement in the local behavior of from having a derivative in is small. In particular, for functions on an infinite-dimensional space, we cannot expect any direct analog of the classical Sobolev embedding theorems.
There is, however, a type of Sobolev inequality, established by Leonard Gross and known as a logarithmic Sobolev inequality, that has dimension-independent constants and therefore continues to hold in the infinite-dimensional setting. The logarithmic Sobolev inequality says, roughly, that if a function is in with respect to a Gaussian measure and has one derivative that is also in, then is in "-log", meaning that the integral of is finite. The inequality expressing this fact has constants that do not involve the dimension of the space and, thus, the inequality holds in the setting of a Gaussian measure on an infinite-dimensional space. It is now known that logarithmic Sobolev inequalities hold for many different types of measures, not just Gaussian measures.
Although it might seem as if the -log condition is a very small improvement over being in, this improvement is sufficient to derive an important result, namely hypercontractivity for the associated Dirichlet form operator. This result means that if a function is in the range of the exponential of the Dirichlet form operator—which means that the function has, in some sense, infinitely many derivatives in —then the function does belong to for some .