No label defined (Q4797974)

Lebesgue spaces \(L^{p(x)}\) whose exponent \(p(x)\) is a function on the underlying domain, not necessarily constant, and the corresponding Sobolev spaces, were introduced in late 1980's and early 1990's. Recently, we have seen a renaissance of this topic, connected with a discovery due to \textit{M. Růžička} [Electrorheological Fluids: Modeling and Mathematical Theory. Lect. Notes Math. 1748. Springer (2000; Zbl 0962.76001)] of the crucial role of these spaces in the mathematical modeling of certain PDE's with variable rates of growth. This type of generalized Lebesgue and Sobolev spaces possess certain rather subtle features which make the study of them a little complicated and technical (for example, it is not entirely clear at the first glance what norms the spaces should be furnished with). While these, and some more, questions concerning the generalized Lebesgue and Sobolev spaces have been studied and answered long time ago [cf. e.g. \textit{O. Kováčik} and \textit{J. Rákosník}, Czech. Math. J. 41(116), 592-618 (1991; Zbl 0784.46029)], certain challenging problems have been solved only recently (boundedness of the maximal operator, to name just one, characterized by \textit{L. Diening} [to appear in Math. Inequal. Appl.] and many more still open. Further important results were obtained by \textit{S. G. Samko} and by \textit{V. Zhikov} (several papers, see e.g. the references in the paper under review). The paper under review is another contribution to this promising and rapidly developing theory. The authors use the recent advances in the area to extend their earlier work [Part I, Studia Math. 143, 267-293 (2000; Zbl 0974.46040)], where Sobolev-type inequalities were established under the extra assumption that \(p\) is a Lipschitz function. More precisely, they showed that, then, \[ \|f\|_{M}\leq C \|f\|_{W^{1,p(x)}} \] with \(C\) independent of \(f\), where \(M\) is the Orlicz-Musiełak space generated by the function \(M(x,t)=t^{\frac{np(x)}{n-p(x)}}w(x)\) with certain appropriate weight \(w\), provided that \(1\leq p(x)<n\). Here, the same embedding is shown under a relaxed assumption on \(p\). Namely, \(p\) is supposed only to belong to a Sobolev space \(W^{1,\sigma}\), where \(\sigma\in(n,\infty)\). A number of side results are established, too (including the density of smooth functions under mild assumptions on \(p\), again).