Improved bounds in the metric cotype inequality for Banach spaces (Q610754): Difference between revisions

The paper is devoted to the notion of metric cotype introduced in [\textit{M. Mendel} and \textit{A. Naor}, Ann. Math. (2) 168, No.~1, 247--298 (2008; Zbl 1187.46014)]: A metric space \((M,d_M)\) is said to have metric cotype \(q>0\) with constant \(\Gamma>0\) if, for every integer \(n\), there exists an even integer \(m\) such that, for every \(f:\mathbb{Z}_m^n\to X\), we have \[ \sum_{j=1}^n\mathbb{E}_x\left[d_M\left(f\left(x+\frac{m}{2}\,e_j\right),f(x)\right)^q\right]\leq \Gamma^q m^q\mathbb{E}_{\varepsilon,x}\left[d_M\left(f(x+\varepsilon),f(x)\right)^q\right], \] where the expectations are taken with respect to \(x\) chosen uniformly at random from the discrete torus \(\mathbb{Z}_m^n\), and \(\varepsilon\) chosen uniformly at random from \(\{-1,0,1\}^n\); here, \(\{e_j\}_{j=1}^n\) denotes the standard basis of \(\mathbb{Z}_m^n\). As was already noted by \textit{M. Mendel} and \textit{A. Naor} [op. cit], good bounds on \(m\) in terms of \(n\) are important for applications of metric cotype to the theory of embeddings. The present paper is devoted to such bounds for Banach spaces. It is shown that, if \((X,\|\cdot\|_X)\) is a Banach space with Rademacher cotype \(q\), then, for every integer \(n\), there exists an even integer \(m\leq C_{X,q}n^{1+\frac{1}{q}}\) (where by \(C_{X,q}\) we denote constants which depend only on \(X\) and \(q\)) such that, for every \(f:\mathbb{Z}_m^n\to X\), we have \[ \sum_{j=1}^n\mathbb{E}_x\Bigg[\left\|f\left(x+\frac{m}{2}\,e_j\right)-f(x)\right\|_X^q\Bigg]\leq C_{X,q} m^q\mathbb{E}_{\varepsilon,x}\Big[\left\|f(x+\varepsilon)-f(x)\right\|_X^q\Big]. \] This improves the bound on \(m\) from [op. cit]. The proof of this result is based on certain combinatorial identities and on a ``smoothing and approximation'' procedure which simplifies the proof of the metric characterization of Rademacher cotype in [op. cit]. The authors also show that any such ``smoothing and approximation'' approach to metric cotype inequalities cannot be used to get estimates for \(m\) of order lower than \(n^{\frac12+\frac{1}{q}}\). Section 1.3 presents a discussion of consequences of the improved bounds for the theory of embeddings and related open problems.