Abstract: | Let Wpr be the Sobolev class consisting of 2π-periodic functions f such that ‖f(r)‖p ≤ 1. We consider the relative widths dn(Wpr, MWpr, Lp), which characterize the best approximation of the class Wpr in the space Lp by linear subspaces for which (in contrast to Kolmogorov widths) it is additionally required that the approximating functions g should lie in MWpr, i.e., ‖g(r)‖p ≤ M. We establish estimates for the relative widths in the cases of p = 1 and p = ∞; it follows from these estimates that for almost optimal (with error at most Cn?r, where C is an absolute constant) approximations of the class Wpr by linear 2n-dimensional spaces, the norms of the rth derivatives of some approximating functions are not less than cln min(n, r) for large n and r. |