Sharp weak type estimates for Riesz transforms

Let $d$ be a given positive integer and let $\{R_j\}_{j=1}^d$ denote the collection of Riesz transforms on $\mathbb {R}^d$ . For $1<p<\infty $ , we determine the best constant $C_p$ such that the following holds. For any locally integrable function $f$ on $\mathbb {R}^d$ and any $j\in \{1,\,2,\,\ldots ,\,d\}$ , $$\begin{aligned} ||(R_jf)_+||_{L^{p,\infty }(\mathbb {R}^d)}\le C_p||f||_{L^{p,\infty }(\mathbb {R}^d)}. \end{aligned}$$ A related statement for Riesz transforms on spheres is also established. The proofs exploit Gundy–Varopoulos representation of Riesz transforms and appropriate inequality for orthogonal martingales.