On the growth of real functions and their derivatives (Q1664066)

Let \(q\) be a nonnegative integer and assume that \(\alpha>1\) is a real number. The main result of this paper establishes that if \(f:[1,\infty)\rightarrow{\mathbb R}\) is \(k\)-times continuously differentiable, then \[ \liminf_{x\rightarrow +\infty}\frac{x^k\cdot\log x\cdot \log_2 x\cdot\dots\cdot\log_q x\cdot f^{(k)}(x)}{1+|f(x)|^\alpha}\leq 0, \] where \(\log_p x\) denotes the \(p\)-times iterated natural logarithm. It is optimal in the sense that \(\log_qx\) cannot be replaced by \((\log_qx)^\beta\) with any \(\beta>1\).