Riesz potential and Sobolev embeddings on generalized Lebesgue and Sobolev spaces Lp(·) and Wk,p(·)

We study the Riesz potentials I_αf on the generalized Lebesgue spaces L^p(·)(?^d), where 0 < α < d and I_αf(x) ? ∫equation/tex2gif-inf-3.gif |f(y)| |x – y|^{α – d} dy. Under the assumptions that p locally satisfies |p(x) – p(x)| ≤ C/(– ln |x – y|) and is constant outside some large ball, we prove that I_α : L^p(·)(?^d) → L^p?(·)(?^d), where . If p is given only on a bounded domain Ω with Lipschitz boundary we show how to extend p to on ?^d such that there exists a bounded linear extension operator ? : W^1,p(·)(Ω) ? (?^d), while the bounds and the continuity condition of p are preserved. As an application of Riesz potentials we prove the optimal Sobolev embeddings W^k,p(·)(?^d) ?L^p*(·)(R^d) with and W^1,p(·)(Ω) ? L^p*(·)(Ω) for k = 1. We show compactness of the embeddings W^1,p(·)(Ω) ? L^q(·)(Ω), whenever q(x) ≤ p*(x) – ε for some ε > 0. (© 2004 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)