Linear extension operators for Sobolev spaces on radially symmetric binary trees (Q6175433)

For a complete, finite binary tree \(V=\bigcup_{k=0}^N\{0,1\}^k\), the paper proves the existence of a linear extension operator for a function \(f\colon \partial V\to \mathbb R\) defined on the leaves \(\partial V=\{0,1\}^N\) of \(V\), to a function \(F\colon V\to \mathbb R\), minimizing the \(W^{1,p}\)-Sobolev seminorm, for \(p\in (1,\infty)\), of the extension. The existence of such an operator is proven in the particular case of radially symmetric trees, i.e., those for which the weights on the edges depend solely on the depth of the edge (= its distance from the root of the tree). When such weights \(W_1,\ldots, W_N>0\) are given, the \(p\)-Sobolev seminorm considered in the paper is given for every \(F\colon V\to \mathbb R\) by \[ \|F\|_{W^{1,p}(V)}:=\left (\sum_{k=1}^NW_k\sum_{x\in \{0,1\}^k} |F(x)-F(\pi_{k-1}(x))|^p\right )^{1/p}, \] where \(\pi_{k-1}(x)\) stands for the prefix of \(x\) of length \(k-1\), while for \(f\colon \partial V\to \mathbb R\) it is defined \[ \|f\|_{W^{1,p}(\partial V)}:= \inf \{\|F\|_{W^{1,p}(V)}:\, F|_{\partial V}=f\}. \] With the above notation, the main theorem of the paper (Theorem~1.1) states that there exists a linear map \(H\colon \mathbb R^{\partial V}\to \mathbb R^{V}\) such that \(Hf|_{\partial V}=f\) and that there is a constant \(C_p\) (depending only on \(p\)) so that \[ \|Hf\|_{W^{1,p}(V)}\leq C_p \|f\|_{W^{1,p}(\partial V)}\quad \text{ for all }f\in \mathbb R^{\partial V}. \] The operator \(H\) is a harmonic extension operator, associated with a certain random walk defined on the tree, whose Markov kernel is determined by a suitable requirement on the probability that a random walk starting at some vertex of depth \(s\) will reach a leaf of the tree before reaching a vertex of depth \(s-1\). In the case \(p=2\), the operator \(H\) coincides with the standard harmonic extension operator. For non radially symmetric trees it is conjectured that there is no linear extension operator with the control on the norm by a constant depending only on \(p\).