On the interpolation constants for variable Lebesgue spaces

For $\theta \in (0,1)$ and variable exponents $p_0(·),q_0(·)$ and $p_1(·),q_1(·)$ with values in 1, ∞], let the variable exponents $p_{\theta }(·),q_{\theta }(·)$ be defined by $$1/p_{\theta }(·):=(1?\theta )/p_0(·)+\theta /p_1(·),1/q_{\theta }(·):=(1?\theta )/q_0(·)+\theta /q_1(·).$$ The Riesz–Thorin–type interpolation theorem for variable Lebesgue spaces says that if a linear operator T acts boundedly from the variable Lebesgue space $L^{p_j(·)}$ to the variable Lebesgue space $L^{q_j(·)}$ for $j=0,1$, then $${\parallel T\parallel }_{L^{p_{\theta }(·)}\to L^{q_{\theta }(·)}}\le {C\parallel T\parallel }_{L^{p_0(·)}\to L^{q_0(·)}}^{1?\theta }{\parallel T\parallel }_{L^{p_1(·)}\to L^{q_1(·)}}^{\theta },$$ where C is an interpolation constant independent of T. We consider two different modulars ${?}^{\max }(·)$ and ${?}^{\mathrm{sum}}(·)$ generating variable Lebesgue spaces and give upper estimates for the corresponding interpolation constants C_max and C_sum, which imply that $C_{\max }\le 2$ and $C_{\mathrm{sum}}\le 4$, as well as, lead to sufficient conditions for $C_{\max }=1$ and $C_{\mathrm{sum}}=1$. We also construct an example showing that, in many cases, our upper estimates are sharp and the interpolation constant is greater than one, even if one requires that $p_j(·)=q_j(·)$, $j=0,1$ are Lipschitz continuous and bounded away from one and infinity (in this case, ${?}^{\max }(·)={?}^{\mathrm{sum}}(·)$).