Analytic capacity, the Cauchy transform, and non-homogeneous Calderón-Zygmund theory (Q371909)

In the decade 1995--2005, a number of seminal ideas regarding analytic capacity and its relationship with the rectifiability made their appearance that paved the way for the complete solution of the long-standing Painlevé problem. This problem consists in characterizing removable singularities for bounded analytic functions in metric and/or geometric terms. These ideas included the discovery of the relationship between the Cauchy kernel and the Menger curvature, the identity on the \(L^2\) boundedness of the Cauchy transform and the rectifiability, the solution of Vitushkin's conjecture for sets with finite length and the semiadditivity of analytic capacity. The very interesting book under review presents these groundbreaking advances on the study of analytic capacity. Due to the fundamental role it plays in this field, the Cauchy transform is accordingly one of the main topics. Another important and interesting theme is the so-called non-homogeneous Calderón-Zygmund theory, whose development has been motivated to a large extent by the problems arising in connection with analytic capacity. This book consists of nine chapters. Each chapter contains a very readable exposition of key results on a given area, and is followed by historical notes with references, including a discussion of further results. The first chapter summarizes some classical results on analytic capacity and the Painlevé problem. Chapter 2 discusses some basic results on the non-homogeneous Calderón-Zygmund theory. Particularly, by means of a suitable Calderón-Zygmund decomposition, it is shown that the \(L^2\) boundedness of singular integral operators implies that they are of weak type \((1,1)\). Chapter 3 deals with the Cauchy integral operator. Its relationship with Menger Curvature is explained. Using this relationship, the author proves the \(T1\) theorem for the Cauchy transform, which, together with a Fourier type estimate for the curvature of the arc length measure, further implies the \(L^2\) boundedness of the Cauchy transform on Lipschitz graphs. The author also shows the \(L^2\) boundedness of the Cauchy transform with respect to arc length on Ahlfors-David regular curves. At the end of this chapter, a different approach to estimating the curvature and the Cauchy transform on Lipschitz graphs and Ahlfors-David regular curves which is based on the \(\beta\) numbers of Peter Jones is described. In Chapter 4, the author introduces a notion of the capacity denoted by \(\gamma_+\), and shows how this can be estimated from below by means of a suitable dualization of the weak \((1,1)\) estimate for the Cauchy transform. By using the \(L^2\) boundedness of the Cauchy transform on Lipschitz graphs, the author proves Denjoy's conjecture. Moreover, the author also characterizes \(\gamma_+\) in terms of measures with linear growth and finite curvature, which implies the semiadditivity of \(\gamma_+\). Finally, the behavior of \(\gamma_+\) on some Cantor sets and its connection with another capacity from non-linear potential theory is discussed. Chapter 5 is concerned with the \(Tb\) theorem for non-doubling measures from [\textit{F. Nazarov} et al., Acta Math. 190, No. 2, 151--239 (2003; Zbl 1065.42014)], which plays an important role in the proof of the comparability between the analytic capacity \(\gamma\) and the capacity \(\gamma_+\). The main result of Chapter 6 is the comparability between \(\gamma\) and \(\gamma_+\) and, as a corollary, one gets the semiadditivity of the analytic capacity. The comparability is then applied to deduce an estimate of the Cauchy integral on Ahlfors-David regular Jordan curves. In Chapter 7, the author proves the so-called ``David-Léger curvature theorem'', which, together with the comparability of \(\gamma_+\) and \(\gamma\), completes the proof of Vitushkin's conjecture. Chapter 8 is devoted to the relationship among the existence of principal values for Cauchy transform, the finiteness of the maximal Cauchy transform, and the rectifiability. The last chapter of this book, Chapter 9, goes back to the subject of Calderón-Zygmund theory in non-homogeneous spaces. It deals with some questions concerning the space RBMO\((\mu)\) and the Hardy space \(H^{1,\,\infty}_{\text{atb}}(\mu)\), which are some variants of the classical spaces BMO\((\mu)\) and the atomic Hardy space \(H^{1,\,\infty}_{\text{at}}(\mu)\). It is shown that RBMO\((\mu)\) is an appropriate substitute of BMO\((\mu)\). In particular, Calderón-Zygmund operators are bounded from \(L^{\infty}(\mu)\) to RBMO\((\mu)\), some variant of the John-Nirenberg inequality holds for RBMO\((\mu)\), and the predual of RBMO\((\mu)\) is the Hardy space \(H^{1,\,\infty}_{\text{atb}}(\mu)\). This book under review is a tour de force. It covers a large amount of mathematics and is certainly both a valuable literature for further research and an excellent textbook for graduate students who want to study in directions of geometric measure theory and harmonic analysis.