The best constant in a BMO-inequality for the Beurling-Ahlfors transform (Q1092270)

The Beurling-Ahlfors operator Tf for \(f\in L^ 2(C)\) is defined by the Fourier transform relation \((Tf){\hat{\;}}(\xi)=m(\xi)\hat f(\xi)\) where \(m(\xi)=(\xi /| \xi |)^ 2\) for every \(\xi\in C\setminus \{0\}\). T is a unitary operator on \(L^ 2(C)\) which commutes with translations and dilations. An alternate definition of T is the convolution formula \[ (Tf)(z)=-p.v.\quad \frac{1}{\pi}\int \frac{f(t)d\sigma (t)}{(z-t)^ 2} \] where p.v. means the principal value and \(d\sigma\) (t) is the Lebesgue measure in C. The purpose of this paper is to identify the \(L^{\infty}\to BMO_ 2\) (bounded mean oscillation for \(p=2)\) norm of the Beurling-Ahlfors operator. The author proves that \[ (\int_{B}| Tf(z)-(Tf)_ B|^ 2d\sigma (z))^{1/2}\leq 3 \] for every ball \(B\subset C\) and every function \(f\in L^ 2(C)\) such that \(| f(z)| \leq 1\) almost everywhere and that this inequality is sharp.