On a description of spaces of differentiable functions (Q1810032)

This paper is devoted to study certain spaces of real functions of one variable given on a finite interval. The author generalizes Bernstein's theorem characterizing the space \(C^k([a,b])\) by means of local approximations. The closed interval \([a,b]\) is partitioned into disjoint half-intervals on which best approximation polynomials of degree \(k-1\) divided by the lengths of these half-intervals taken to the power \(k\) are considered. The existence of the limits of these ratios as the lengths of the half-intervals tend to zero is a criterion for the existence of the \(k\)th derivative of a function. Moreover, the author proves the theorem in a stronger form and extends it to the spaces \(W^k_p([a,b])\).