Sobolev spaces revisited (Q2083988)

Summary: We describe a recent, one-parameter family of characterizations of Sobolev and BV functions on \(\mathbb{R}^n\), using sizes of superlevel sets of suitable difference quotients. This provides an alternative point of view to the BBM formula by Bourgain, Brezis, and Mironescu [\textit{J.~Bourgain} et al., in: Optimal control and partial differential equations. In honour of Professor Alain Bensoussan's 60th birthday. Proceedings of the conference, Paris, France, December~4, 2000. Amsterdam: IOS Press; Tokyo: Ohmsha. 439--455 (2001; Zbl 1103.46310)], and complements in the case of BV some results of Cohen, Dahmen, Daubechies, and DeVore [\textit{A.~Cohen} et al., Rev. Mat. Iberoam. 19, No.~1, 235--263 (2003; Zbl 1044.42028)] about the sizes of wavelet coefficients of such functions. An application towards Gagliardo-Nirenberg interpolation inequalities is then given. We also establish a related one-parameter family of formulae for the \(L^p\) norm of functions in \(L^p (\mathbb{R}^n)\).