The inequality of Moser and Trudinger and applications to conformal geometry (Q4425992)

Application of the method of nonlinear partial differential equations in the study of conformal structures started with the work of H. Poincaré. He solved the uniformization problem for Riemann surfaces of genus greater than 1. The analogous question for surfaces of positive curvature was first studied by \textit{J. Moser} [Indiana Univ. Math. J. 20, 1077--1092 (1971; Zbl 0213.13001)], who obtained a sharp version of a limiting case of the Sobolev inequality, which is known as the Moser-Trudinger inequality. In the paper under review, the authors survey some work in conformal geometry in which the Moser-Trudinger inequality plays some role, as well as extensions and generalizations of this inequality to higher dimensions. In dimensions greater than 2, the natural curvature invariants in conformal geometry are the Weyl tensor and the Weyl-Schouten tensor. A new inequality on the 4-sphere is proved, which generalizes the original Moser inequality for the 2-sphere.