Sobolev inequalities of exponential type (Q5939275)

In the last years a considerable attention has been paid to the validity of classical Sobolev inequalities and embeddings when the underlying bounded domain \(D\) in \(\mathbb R^n\), \(n\geq 2\), need not have a smooth boundary \(\partial D\). Most of this work has been concerned with the situation in which the target space of the embedding is of Lebesgue or Hölder type. Much less is known about the situation in the limiting cases. Thus if \(\partial D\) is smooth it is well-known that the Sobolev space \(W^1_n(D)\) is embedded in the Orlicz space \(L_{\Phi}(D)\) with Young function \(\Phi\) with values which behave like \(\exp (t^{n/(n-1)})\) for large values of the argument \(t\). This embedding was also considered for Hölder spaces. In the paper under review spaces of functions that are larger than \(W^1_n(D)\), but are contained in \(\bigcap _{1<p<n}W^1_p(D)\), and, on the other hand, also spaces of functions that are smaller than \(W^1_n(D)\), but each \(W^1_p(D)\) with \(p>n\) is contained in them. The main aim of the paper is to give conditions on \(D\) which are sufficient to ensure Sobolev inequalities yet allow the boundary of \(D\) to be quite rough. The first central result concerns a \(c_0\)-John domain (a domain \(D\) such that there exist \(x_0\in D\) and \(c_0\in (0,1]\) with the property that every \(x\in D\) can be joined to \(x_0\) by a rectifiable curve \(\gamma :[0,l]\to D\), parametrized by arc length, with \(d(\gamma (t), \partial D)\geq c_0t\) for all \(t\in [0,l]\)); the class of such domains is wide and includes Lipschitz domains and the Koch snowflake. The authors show that if \(D\) is a bounded \(c_0\)-John domain and \(u\) is a function on \(D\) such that \[ I(a,D):=\left ( \int _D |\nabla u(x)|^n\log ^{an}(e+|\nabla u(x)|) dx \right)^{1/n}<\infty \] for some \(a<1-1/n\), then there are constants \(c_1\) and \(c_2\) (depending on \(a, c_0,|D|, n\)) such that \[ \int _D\exp\left ( \frac{|u(x)-u_D|}{c_1 I(a,D)} \right)^\alpha dx\leq c_2, \] where \(\alpha =n/(n-1-an)\) and \(u_D=|D|^{-1}\int _Du(x) dx\). When \(\partial D\) is smooth, the special case \(a=0\) corresponds to the Trudinger embedding and \(a<0\) to an earlier result obtained by \textit{N. Fusco, D. L. Lions} and \textit{C. Sbordone} [Proc. Am. Math. Soc. 124, No. 2, 561-565 (1996; Zbl 0841.46023)]. It is also shown that an inequality of this type holds for sets which may have even more irregular boundaries, such as those which satisfy an appropriate type of quasi-hyperbolic boundary condition. Moreover, the authors give geometric criteria for domains sufficient for Sobolev inequalities of single exponential type to be satisfied. In particular their results extend the class of domains where the classical Trudinger inequality is known to hold. In a limiting case, corresponding to \(a=1-1/n\), it is shown that a double exponential inequality holds in smooth and certain non-smooth domains \(D\subset \mathbb R^n\): given any positive constants \(A_1\) and \(A_2<1\) such that \(A_1A_2<2e^{-1}\), there is \(A_3>0\), which does not depend on \(|\nabla u|\), such that \[ \int _D\exp \left [ A_1\exp \left ( A_2 \left ( \frac{|u(x)-u_D|}{I(D)} \right)^{n/(n-1)} \right) \right ]dx \leq A_3 \] where \[ I(D):=\left ( \int _D |\nabla u(x)|^n\log ^{n-1}(e+|\nabla u(x)|) dx \right)^{1/n}<\infty. \] This inequality seems to be new even in balls as far the authors (and the referee) know.