On Birman's sequence of Hardy–Rellich-type inequalities

In 1961, Birman proved a sequence of inequalities $\{I_n\}$, for $n\in \mathbb{N}$, valid for functions in $C_0^n((0,\infty ))?L^2((0,\infty ))$. In particular, $I_1$ is the classical (integral) Hardy inequality and $I_2$ is the well-known Rellich inequality. In this paper, we give a proof of this sequence of inequalities valid on a certain Hilbert space $H_n([0,\infty ))$ of functions defined on $[0,\infty )$. Moreover, $f\in H_n([0,\infty ))$ implies $f^{\prime }\in H_{n?1}([0,\infty ))$; as a consequence of this inclusion, we see that the classical Hardy inequality implies each of the inequalities in Birman's sequence. We also show that for any finite $b>0$, these inequalities hold on the standard Sobolev space $H_0^n((0,b))$. Furthermore, in all cases, the Birman constants ${[(2n?1)!!]}^2/2^{2n}$ in these inequalities are sharp and the only function that gives equality in any of these inequalities is the trivial function in $L^2((0,\infty ))$ (resp., $L^2((0,b))$). We also show that these Birman constants are related to the norm of a generalized continuous Cesàro averaging operator whose spectral properties we determine in detail.     

Existence and convexity of local solutions to degenerate Hessian equations

In this work, we prove the existence of convex solutions to the following k-Hessian equation

$S_k[u]=K(y)g(y,u,Du)$

in the neighborhood of a point $(y_0,u_0,p_0)\in {\mathbb{R}}^n\times \mathbb{R}\times {\mathbb{R}}^n$, where $g\in C^{\infty },g(y_0,u_0,p_0)>0$, $K\in C^{\infty }$ is nonnegative near $y_0$, $K(y_0)=0$ and $\text{Rank}(D_y^{2}K)(y_0)\ge n?k+1$.