VMO spaces associated with divergence form elliptic operators (Q658346)

Consider the second order divergence form elliptic operator \(Lf=-\text{div} (A\nabla f)\) with complex bounded coefficients and an \(n \times n\) matrix \(A=A(x)\) satisfying the ellipticity condition \(\lambda |\xi|^2 \leq \text{Re} \langle A\xi , \xi \rangle\) and \(|\langle A\xi, \zeta \rangle | \leq \Lambda |\xi||\zeta|\), for \(\xi, \;\zeta \in \mathbb{C}^n\) and for some \(\lambda,\;\Lambda\) such that \(0 <\lambda \leq \Lambda < \infty\). In this paper the authors introduce and develop a function space \(VMO_{L}(\mathbb{R}^n)\) of vanishing mean oscillation associated with the operator \(L\). \(H^1_{L}(\mathbb{R}^n)\) can be defined as the completion of \(L^2(\mathbb{R}^n)\) in the norm given by the \(L^1(\mathbb{R}^n)\) norm of the square function \(S_{L}(f)\), where \[ S_{L}(f)(x)={\biggl(\int\!\!\!\int_{|y-x| < t}\bigl|t^2Le^{-t^2L}f(y)\bigr|^2\;\frac{dy\;dt}{t^{n+1}}\biggr)^{1/2}}. \] A function \(f\) is said to belong to \(BMO_{L}(\mathbb{R}^n)\) if \[ \|f\|_{BMO_{L}(\mathbb{R}^n)}= {\biggl(\sup_{B}\frac{1}{|B|}\int_{B}\bigl|(I-e^{-r_{B}^2L})^{M}f(x)\bigr|^2\;dx \biggr)^{1/2}<\infty}, \] where \(M \in \mathbb{N},\;M > n/4\) and \(r_{B}\) is the radius of the ball \(B\) of \(\mathbb{R}^n\). A function \(f\) is said to belong to \(VMO_{L}(\mathbb{R}^n)\), if \(f \in BMO_{L}(\mathbb{R}^n)\), and satisfies the limiting conditions \(\gamma_{1}(f)=\gamma_{2}(f)=\gamma_{3}(f)=0\), where \[ \begin{aligned} \gamma_{1}(f)&=\lim_{a \to 0}\Biggl[\sup_{B:r_{B}\leq a}\biggl(\frac{1}{|B|}\int_{B}\bigl|(I-e^{-r_{B}^2L})^Mf(x)\bigr|^2\;dx\biggr)^{1/2}\Biggr],\\ \gamma_{2}(f)&=\lim_{a \to \infty}\Biggl[\sup_{B:r_{B}\geq a}\biggl(\frac{1}{|B|}\int_{B}\bigl|(I-e^{-r_{B}^2L})^Mf(x)\bigr|^2\;dx\biggr)^{1/2}\Biggr],\\ \gamma_{3}(f)&=\lim_{a \to \infty}\Biggl[\sup_{B \subset B(0, a)^c} \biggl(\frac{1}{|B|}\int_{B}\bigl|(I-e^{-r_{B}^2L})^Mf(x)\bigr|^2\;dx\biggr)^{1/2}\Biggr].\end{aligned} \] The authors prove that the Hardy space \(H_{L}^1(\mathbb{R}^n)\) is the dual of \(VMO_{L^*}(\mathbb{R}^n)\) in which \(L^*\) is the adjoint operator of \(L\) and also give an equivalent characterization of the space \(VMO_{L}(\mathbb{R}^n)\) in the context of the theory of tent spaces.