Stability of sublevel set estimates and sharp \(L^2\) regularity of Radon transforms in the plane (Q1774271)

The paper deals with integral operators of the form \[ T f(x)=\int_R f (\gamma (x,t)) \phi (x,t) \,dt, \] acting on functions on \(\mathbb R^2\). Here \(\phi (x,t)\) is a smooth function supported on a small neighborhood of the origin in \(\mathbb R^2 \times \mathbb R\) with \(\phi (0,0) \neq 0\), and \(\gamma (x,t)\) is a smooth function defined on the support of \(\phi (x,t)\), satisfying \[ \gamma (x,0)=x, \qquad \frac{\partial \gamma}{\partial t}\, (x,t)\neq 0. \] Thus \(T f(x)\) is the average of \(f\) over the curve ``centered at \(x\)'' and represents a smoothing operator. The paper is devoted to precise characterization of this smoothness in the framework of \(L^2\) spaces. Under certain conditions, it is proved that \(T\) is bounded from \(H^s\) to \(H^{s+\delta}\), where \( \delta>0\) can be explicitly determined for a significant class of \(T\).