Characterizations of even-order Musielak-Orlicz-Sobolev spaces via ball averages and their derivatives (Q2285024)

Let \(\Phi\) be a Musielak-Orlicz function and \(L^\Phi\) the related Musielak-Orlicz space on \(\mathbb{R}^n\). The Musielak-Orlicz-Sobolev space \(W^{\alpha,\Phi}\) is given by \(\{f\in L^\Phi: (-\Delta)^{\alpha/2} f\in L^\Phi\}\). Under certain mild assumptions on \(\Phi\), the authors present a series of new characterizations of \(W^{2\ell,\Phi}\) with \(\ell\in\mathbb{N}\) via integral averages of \(f\) on balls and their derivatives on the radius. Comparing with the results of [\textit{F. Dai} et al., Nonlinear Anal., Theory Methods Appl., Ser. A, Theory Methods 128, 86--99 (2015; Zbl 1346.46023)] for classical Sobolev spaces, the results of this paper have wide generality. In fact, as special cases, the corresponding characterizations for some weighted Sobolev spaces, Orlicz-Sobolev spaces and variable Sobolev spaces are also obtained, and such characterizations could be used to introduce these function spaces on any metric measure space.