Pointwise mutipliers of Orlicz function spaces and factorization (Q1683292)

This interesting paper is, in a sense, a ``final work''. That is, it settles in all its complexity the problem of characterization of the space of pointwise multipliers \(M(L^{\varphi_1},L^{\varphi})\) between the Orlicz function spaces \(L^{\varphi }\) and \( L^{\varphi_1},\) which results in another Orlicz space, described as follows, \[ M(L^{\varphi_1},L^{\varphi})= L^{\varphi \ominus \varphi_1}. \] The Young function that generates this space is explicitly given by \[ \varphi \ominus \varphi_1(t)= \sup_{s >0} \{ \varphi(st)- \varphi_1(s) \}. \] This simple statement is, however, the final solution of a long-standing problem. Some partial results were known before, as several papers had studied this issue over the last 50 years. This solution was expected, although some earlier proofs were based on erroneous assumptions. Thus, the paper settles the question and allows this nice characterization to be used in further research. In addition, the paper also gives some applications to the factorization of Orlicz spaces. In particular, Theorem 2 characterizes when, given two Orlicz spaces \(L^{\varphi_1}\) and \(L^\varphi,\) the former factorizes the latter, i.e., when \[ L^{\varphi_1} \odot M(L^{\varphi_1},L^{\varphi}) = L^{\varphi}, \] in terms of the equivalence of some explicit computations of the Young functions involved, inspired by Theorem 1.