Flexible Gabor-wavelet atomic decompositions for \(L^2\) -Sobolev spaces (Q2505606)

The authors propose a general construction of suitably structured frames to present a unified theory for \(L^2\)--Sobolev spaces of wavelet and Gabor frames, usually treated separately. Let \(M_{\omega}(f)(t) := e^{2\pi i \omega \cdot t} f(t)\), \(T_x(f)(t):= f(t-x)\), and \(D_a(f)(t) := |a|^{-1/2} f(t/a)\). This paper studies families of functions of the form \( M_{\omega} T_x D_{\delta(\omega, \alpha)} g\) for \((x,\omega) \in \mathbb R^2\), where \(\delta(\omega, \alpha):= (1 + |\omega|)^{-\alpha}\) and \(\alpha \in [0, 1]\). It is shown that for a suitable discrete sample of such functions one can generate Banach frames for \(L^2\)-Sobolev spaces once \(g\) is sufficiently well localized in the time--frequency plane. It is easy to see that, for \(\alpha=0\), this is just a Gabor family, whereas for \(\alpha \rightarrow 1\) the family tends to the situation encountered in the wavelet context, in a very natural (geometric) sense. This work is organized as follows: Section 1 is an introduction. Section 2 lists the elementary properties of frames and a few notational conventions. In Section 3 the authors briefly review coorbit space theory and the unified approach to Gabor and wavelet Banach frames developed by \textit{H. G. Feichtinger} and \textit{K. Gröchenig} [Function spaces and applications, Proc. US-Swed. Semin., Lund/Swed., Lect. Notes Math. 1302, 52--73 (1988; Zbl 0658.22007), J. Funct. Anal. 86, No. 2, 307--340 (1989; Zbl 0691.46011), Monatsh. Math. 108, No. 2/3, 129--148 (1989; Zbl 0713.43004)] and \textit{K. Gröchenig} [Monatsh. Math. 112, No. 1, 1--42 (1991; Zbl 0736.42022)], and explain why it cannot be applied directly to derive any intermediate theory and time-frequency tool. Section 4 collects the necessary tools and technical results that will be used in what follows. This includes the concept of admissible coverings of \(\mathbb R^d\) and bounded admissible partitions of unity. In Section 5 a new technique is introduced to generate admissible (discrete) coverings from certain continuous coverings of the real line. In Section 6 the authors combine the results and tools of the previous two sections to give unified sufficient conditions for the existence of \textit{flexible Gabor--wavelet (discrete) frames} for \(L^2\)--Sobolev spaces. For related work, see \textit{E. Hernández, D. Labate} and \textit{G. Weiss} [J. Geom. Anal. 12, No. 4, 615--662 (2002; Zbl 1039.42032)].