On the continuous and discontinuous maximal operators (Q1748238)

The author investigates a wide class of maximal operators \(T^*\) determined by a family \(\{T_r\}_{r\in I}\) of linear operators acting on \(L^p({\mathbb R}^n)\), and defined by \(T^*f(x)=\sup\limits_{r\in I} |T_r f(x)|\) (the particular cases are the spherical maximal operator, the maximal Hilbert transform, the fractional maximal operator, and the classical Hardy-Littlewood maximal function). It is assumed that the family \(\{T_r\}\) satisfies some natural properties. For nonlinear operators, like maximal operators, in general the \textit{continuity} is not implied by the \textit{boundedness}. The author studies the question (attributed to T. Iwaniec) concerning the continuity of maximal operators in Sobolev spaces. It is proved that the boundedness of \(T^*\) from \(L^p({\mathbb R}^n) \to L^q({\mathbb R}^n)\) implies the boundedness and continuity of \(T^*\) from \({\mathcal F}_1\) to the Sobolev space \(W^{1,q}({\mathbb R}^n)\), where \({\mathcal F}_1 \subset L^p({\mathbb R}^n)\) is a suitable normed function space. This general result is applied to some classical maximal operators. It is shown that the spherical maximal operator is continuous \(W^{1, p}(\mathbb{R}^n) \mapsto W^{1, p}(\mathbb{R}^n)\), when \(p > \frac{n}{n - 1}\); the maximal Hilbert transform is continuous \(W^{1,q}({\mathbb R}^n)\to W^{1,q}({\mathbb R}^n)\), when \(1 < p < \infty\). On the other hand, it is proved that the restricted Hardy-Littlewood maximal operator \(M_\lambda\), where the supremum is taken over the \textit{cubes} with radii greater than \(\lambda > 0\), is bounded from \(L^p(\mathbb{R}^n)\) to \(W^{1, p}(\mathbb{R}^n)\) but \textit{discontinuous}.