Sharp weighted Sobolev trace inequalities and fractional powers of the Laplacian (Q2182592)

The author establishes sharp Sobolev trace inequalities in the upper half-space \(\mathbb{R}_{+}^{n+1}\) associated to the fractional powers of the Laplace operator \((-\overline{\Delta })^{\gamma }\), with \(\gamma \in (0,\infty )\setminus \mathbb{N}\), hence involving the \(W^{k,2}(\mathbb{R}_{+}^{n+1},y^{\alpha })\)-norm. The fractional powers of the Laplace operator on \(\mathbb{R}^{n}=\partial \mathbb{R}_{+}^{n+1}\) can be considered as generalized Dirichlet-to-Neumann operators associated to powers of the weighted Laplace operator in the upper half-space. The author first recursively defines the boundary operators \(B_{s}^{2k+1}:C^{\infty }(\mathbb{R}_{+}^{n+1})\rightarrow C^{\infty}\mathbb{R}^{n})\), for a given \(k\in \mathbb{N}_{0}\), \(0\leq s\leq 2k+1\), and the derivative \(\partial _{y}\) in \(\mathbb{R}_{+}^{n+1}\), in terms of the Laplace operator \(\Delta \), and of the induced Laplace operator \(\overline{\Delta }\) on \(\mathbb{R}^{n}\). He also defines the Dirichlet form \[\begin{split}&\mathcal{Q}_{2k+1}(U,V)=\int_{\mathbb{R}_{+}^{n+1}}U(-\Delta )^{k+1}Vdxdy\\&-\sum_{j=0}^{[k/2]} \oint_{\mathbb{R}^{n}}B_{2j}^{2k+1}(U)B_{2k+1-2j}^{2k+1}(V)dy-\sum_{j=0}^{k-[k/2]-1}\oint_{\mathbb{R}^{n}}B_{2j+1}^{2k+1}(U)B_{2k-2j}^{2k+1}(V)dy \end{split}\] and the energy \(\mathcal{E}_{2k+1}(U)=\mathcal{Q}_{2k+1}(U,U)\). The three main results of the paper prove lower bounds for the energy \(\mathcal{E}_{2k+1}(U)\) for any function \(U\) defined on \(\mathbb{R}_{+}^{n+1}\), first in the general case, then with special expressions of the lower bounds in the cases \(n>2k+1\) and \(n=2k+1\) (Lebedev-Milin inequality). These lower bounds are critical in the sense that they are equalities if and only if \(U\) satisfies the Dirichlet problem \(\Delta ^{k+1}U=0\) in \(\mathbb{R}_{+}^{n+1}\), \(B_{2j}^{2k+1}U=f^{(2j)}\) on \(\mathbb{R}^{n}\) for \(0\leq j\leq \lbrack k/2]\) and \(B_{2j+1}^{2k+1}U=\phi ^{(2j)}\) on \(\mathbb{R}^{n}\) for \(0\leq j\leq k-[k/2]-1\). For the proofs, the author first recalls the identification of fractional powers of the Laplace operator on Euclidean space via scattering theory for the hyperbolic Laplace operator in Poincaré's upper half-space. Then he proves properties of the boundary operators associated to powers of the weighted Laplace operator and he analyzes their role in recovering fractional powers of the Laplace operator as generalized Dirichlet-to-Neumann operators. He proves that these boundary operators are conformally covariant with respect to the conformal group of \((\mathbb{R}_{+}^{n+1};\mathbb{R}^{n})\). He proves the existence and uniqueness of solutions to the weighted analogue of the previous Dirichlet problem, which is a higher-order degenerate elliptic boundary value problem. The author here generalizes observations by \textit{L. Caffarelli} and \textit{L. Silvestre} in [Commun. Partial Differ. Equations 32, No. 8, 1245--1260 (2007; Zbl 1143.26002)] and of \textit{S.Y.A. Chang} and \textit{R.A. Yang} in [Chin. Ann. Math., Ser. B 38, No. 1, 215--234 (2017; Zbl 1362.53043)], among other works.