Improved Poincaré inequalities

Although the Hardy inequality corresponding to one quadratic singularity, with optimal constant, does not admit any extremal function, it is well known that such a potential can be improved, in the sense that a positive term can be added to the quadratic singularity without violating the inequality, and even a whole asymptotic expansion can be built, with optimal constants for each term. This phenomenon has not been much studied for other inequalities. Our purpose is to prove that it also holds for the gaussian Poincaré inequality. The method is based on a recursion formula, which allows to identify the optimal constants in the asymptotic expansion, order by order. We also apply the same strategy to a family of Hardy–Poincaré inequalities which interpolate between Hardy and gaussian Poincaré inequalities.     

Local Poincaré inequalities in non-negative curvature and finite dimension

In this paper, we derive a new set of Poincaré inequalities on the sphere, with respect to some Markov kernels parameterized by a point in the ball. When this point goes to the boundary, those Poincaré inequalities are shown to give the curvature-dimension inequality of the sphere, and when it is at the center they reduce to the usual Poincaré inequality. We then extend them to Riemannian manifolds, giving a sequence of inequalities which are equivalent to the curvature-dimension inequality, and interpolate between this inequality and the Poincaré inequality for the invariant measure. This inequality is optimal in the case of the spheres.     

Is an Orlicz–Poincaré inequality an open ended condition,and what does that mean?

In [16], Keith and Zhong prove that spaces admitting Poincaré inequalities also admit a priori stronger Poincaré inequalities. We use their technique, with slight adjustments, to obtain a similar result in the case of Orlicz–Poincaré inequalities. We give examples in the plane that show all hypotheses are required.     

Korn inequality on irregular domains

In this paper, we study the weighted Korn inequality on some irregular domains, e.g., s-John domains and domains satisfying quasihyperbolic boundary conditions. Examples regarding sharpness of the Korn inequality on these domains are presented. Moreover, we show that Korn inequalities imply certain Poincaré inequality.     

Functional inequalities for transient birth-death processes and their applications

We give a new diagram about uniform decay, empty essential spectrum and various functional inequalities, including Poincaré inequalities, super- and weak-Poincaré inequalities, for transient birth-death processes. This diagram is completely opposite to that in ergodic situation, and substantially points out the difference between transient birth-death processes and recurrent ones. The criterion for the empty essential spectrum is achieved. Some matching sufficient and necessary conditions for weak-Poincaré inequalities and super-Poincaré inequalities are also presented.     

Refined convex Sobolev inequalities

This paper is devoted to refinements of convex Sobolev inequalities in the case of power law relative entropies: a nonlinear entropy-entropy production relation improves the known inequalities of this type. The corresponding generalized Poincaré-type inequalities with weights are derived. Optimal constants are compared to the usual Poincaré constant.     

Ergodicity for time-changed symmetric stable processes

In this paper we study ergodicity and related semigroup property for a class of symmetric Markov jump processes associated with time-changed symmetric α$\alpha$-stable processes. For this purpose, explicit and sharp criteria for Poincaré type inequalities (including Poincaré, super Poincaré and weak Poincaré inequalities) of the corresponding non-local Dirichlet forms are derived. Moreover, our main results, when applied to a class of one-dimensional stochastic differential equations driven by symmetric α$\alpha$-stable processes, yield sharp criteria for their various ergodic properties and corresponding functional inequalities.     

On the best constant of weighted Poincaré inequalities

We compute the optimal constant for some weighted Poincaré inequalities obtained by Fausto Ferrari and Enrico Valdinoci in [F. Ferrari, E. Valdinoci, Some weighted Poincaré inequalities, Indiana Univ. Math. J. 58 (4) (2009) 1619-1637].     

Relative isoperimetric inequalities and sufficient conditions for finite perimeter on metric spaces

We study equivalence between the Poincaré inequality and several different relative isoperimetric inequalities on metric measure spaces. We then use these inequalities to establish sufficient conditions for the finite perimeter of sets.     

Lyapunov conditions for Super Poincaré inequalities

We show how to use Lyapunov functions to obtain functional inequalities which are stronger than Poincaré inequality (for instance logarithmic Sobolev or F-Sobolev). The case of Poincaré and weak Poincaré inequalities was studied in [D. Bakry, P. Cattiaux, A. Guillin, Rate of convergence for ergodic continuous Markov processes: Lyapunov versus Poincaré, J. Funct. Anal. 254 (3) (2008) 727-759. Available on Mathematics arXiv:math.PR/0703355, 2007]. This approach allows us to recover and extend in a unified way some known criteria in the euclidean case (Bakry and Emery, Wang, Kusuoka and Stroock, …).     

Capacitary Criteria for Poincaré-Type Inequalities

The Poincaré-type inequality is a unification of various inequalities including the F-Sobolev inequalities, Sobolev-type inequalities, logarithmic Sobolev inequalities, and so on. The aim of this paper is to deduce some unified upper and lower bounds of the optimal constants in Poincaré-type inequalities for a large class of normed linear (Banach, Orlicz) spaces in terms of capacity. The lower and upper bounds differ only by a multiplicative constant, and so the capacitary criteria for the inequalities are also established. Both the transient and the ergodic cases are treated. Besides, the explicit lower and upper estimates in dimension one are computed. Mathematics Subject Classifications (2000) 60J55, 31C25, 60J35, 47D07.Research supported in part NSFC (No. 10121101) and 973 Project.     

On Friedrichs-Poincaré-type inequalities

Friedrichs- and Poincaré-type inequalities are important and widely used in the area of partial differential equations and numerical analysis. Most of their proofs appearing in references are the argument of reduction to absurdity. In this paper, we give direct proofs of Friedrichs-type inequalities in H¹(Ω) and Poincaré-type inequalities in some subspaces of W1,p(Ω). The dependencies of the inequality coefficients on the domain Ω and some sub-domains are illustrated explicitly.     

Minimal Morse flows on compact manifolds

In this paper we prove, using the Poincaré-Hopf inequalities, that a minimal number of non-degenerate singularities can be computed in terms only of abstract homological boundary information. Furthermore, this minimal number can be realized on some manifold with non-empty boundary satisfying the abstract homological boundary information. In fact, we present all possible indices and types (connecting or disconnecting) of singularities realizing this minimal number. The Euler characteristics of all manifolds realizing this minimal number are obtained and the associated Lyapunov graphs of Morse type are described and shown to have the lowest topological complexity.     

Rate of convergence for ergodic continuous Markov processes: Lyapunov versus Poincaré

We study the relationship between two classical approaches for quantitative ergodic properties: the first one based on Lyapunov type controls and popularized by Meyn and Tweedie, the second one based on functional inequalities (of Poincaré type). We show that they can be linked through new inequalities (Lyapunov-Poincaré inequalities). Explicit examples for diffusion processes are studied, improving some results in the literature. The example of the kinetic Fokker-Planck equation recently studied by Hérau and Nier, Helffer and Nier, and Villani is in particular discussed in the final section.     

Hardy and Rellich-Type Inequalities for Metrics Defined by Vector Fields

Let {X _i }, i=1,...,m be a system of locally Lipschitz vector fields on DR ⁿ , such that the corresponding intrinsic metric is well-defined and continuous w.r.t. the Euclidean topology. Suppose that the Lebesgue measure is doubling w.r.t. the intrinsic balls, that a scaled L¹ Poincaré inequality holds for the vector fields at hand (thus including the case of Hörmander vector fields) and that the local homogeneous dimension near a point x ₀ is sufficiently large. Then weighted Sobolev–Poincaré inequalities with weights given by power of (,x ₀) hold; as particular cases, they yield non-local analogues of both Hardy and Sobolev–Okikiolu inequalities. A general argument which shows how to deduce Rellich-type inequalities from Hardy inequalities is then given: this yields new Rellich inequalities on manifolds and even in the uniformly elliptic case. Finally, applications of Sobolev–Okikiolu inequalities to heat kernel estimates for degenerate subelliptic operators and to criteria for the absence of bound states for Schrödinger operators H=–L+V are given.     

Hardy–Rellich inequalities with boundary remainder terms and applications

We prove a family of Hardy–Rellich inequalities with optimal constants and additional boundary terms. These inequalities are used to study the behavior of extremal solutions to biharmonic Gelfand-type equations under Steklov boundary conditions.     

Global weighted inequalities for operators and harmonic forms on manifolds

In this paper, both the local and global weighted Sobolev-Poincaré imbedding inequalities and Poincaré inequalities for the composition T°G are established, where T is the homotopy operator and G is Green's operator applied to A-harmonic forms on manifolds.     

On discrete inequalities of the Poincaré type

The aim of the present paper is to establish some new discrete inequalities of the Poincaré type involving functions ofn independent variables and their first order forward differences. The proofs given here are quite elementary and our results provide new estimates on this type of discrete inequalities.     

Sharp Log-Sobolev Inequalities

We show existence of a wide variety of Log-Sobolev inequalities in which the constant is exactly that required by the Poincaré inequality which may be inferred from the Log-Sobolev.

     

Sobolev spaces of symmetric functions and applications

We prove sharp pointwise estimates for functions in the Sobolev spaces of radial functions defined in a ball. As a consequence, we obtain some imbeddings of such Sobolev spaces in weighted Lq-spaces. We also prove similar imbeddings for Sobolev spaces of functions with partial symmetry. Our techniques lead to new Hardy type inequalities. It is important to observe that we do not require any vanishing condition on the boundary to obtain all our estimates. We apply these imbeddings to obtain radial solutions and partially symmetric solutions for a biharmonic equation of the Hénon type under both Dirichlet and Navier boundary conditions. The delicate question of the regularity of these solutions is also established.