Maximal averages over surfaces (Q1378459)

This paper is about maximal operators associated to smooth measures on compact surfaces of finite type. To be more precise, a surface \(S\) in \({\mathbb R}^n\) is said to be of finite type if the order of contact of the tangent lines to the manifold is bounded. Given a family \((D_t)_{t>0}\) of possibly nonisotropic dilations of \({\mathbb R}^n\) and a smooth surface measure \(\sigma\) on \(S\), we consider the dilates \(\delta_t\sigma\) of \(\sigma\) given by \((\delta_t\sigma)(u)=\sigma(u\circ D_t)\) for any bounded continuous function \(u\) on \({\mathbb R}^n\). The associated maximal operator \({\mathcal M}\) is given by \({\mathcal M}f=\sup_{t>0} | (\delta_t\sigma)*f| \) for all continuous compactly supported functions \(f\) on \({\mathbb R}^n\). Estimates of the form \(\| {\mathcal M}f\|_p\leq \| f\|_p\) are studied for \(p\) in the range \((2,\infty)\). A sample result, for the case where \(S\) is a convex hypersurface and the dilations are isotropic, is that \({\mathcal M}\) is \(L^p\)-bounded if and only if \(x\mapsto d(x,H)^{-{1/p}}\in L^1(S)\) for all hyperplanes \(H\) not passing through the origin (here \(d\) denotes the Euclidean distance). Similar results are found for surfaces of higher codimension and for nonisotropic dilations. The tools involved include various sorts of decay estimates for oscillatory integrals and clever decompositions of the surface near flat points.