Conductor and capacitary inequalities for functions on topological spaces and their applications to Sobolev-type imbeddings (Q2484256)

One of the most important contemporary trends in function spaces theory is the search for precise Sobolev embeddings in the limiting cases and related operator estimates. In connection with this problem, various techniques have been applied. One of the most successful ones is the method of conductor and capacitary estimates which was developed in the early 1970's by V.~Maz'ya. In the article under review the author obtains a~variety of new conductor inequalities in a~fairly general setting, involving functionals acting on functions defined on topological spaces. As an application, he obtains sharp capacitary estimates that are stronger than the classical Sobolev inequality and its limiting generalizations to exponential Orlicz spaces (the Yudovich--Pokhozhaev--Trudinger inequality) and Lorentz--Zygmund spaces (the Maz'ya--Hansson--Brézis--Wainger inequality). We recall that a~typical conductor inequality states that \[ \int_0^{\infty}\text{cap}_p(\overline{M_t},\Omega)\,d(t^ p)\leq p^{p}(p-1)^{1-p}\int_{\Omega}| \nabla f| ^ p\, dx, \] where \(\Omega\) is an~open set in \(\mathbb R^ n\), \(f\) is an~infinitely differentiable function with compact support on \(\Omega\), \(1\leq p<\infty\), and \(M_t=\{x\in\Omega\); \(| f(x)| >t\}\). Here, \(\text{cap}_p\) is the so-called conductor \(p\)-capacitance. This inequality is of independent interest, but it also has a number of important applications in analysis and mathematical physics. The constant in the inequality is sharp. Among the interesting applications of the inequality is the estimate \[ \int_0^{\infty} \frac{d(t^ n)}{(\log\frac{| M_t| }{| M_{at}| })^{n-1}} \leq C(a) \int_{\Omega}| \nabla f| ^ p\, dx, \] which extends the known Maz'ya--Hansson--Brézis--Wainger inequality to the case of domains of infinite volume. Such estimates have been unavailable so far.