No abstract

No abstract

No abstract

Abstract. Refinements of the classical Sobolev inequality lead to optimal domain problems in a natural way. This is made precise in recent work of Edmunds, Kerman and Pick; the fundamental technique is to prove that the (generalized) Sobolev inequality is equivalent to the boundedness of an associated kernel operator on [0, 1]. We make a detailed study of both the optimal domain, providing various characterizations of it, and of properties of the kernel operator when it is extended to act in its optimal domain. Several results are devoted to identifying the maximal rearrangement invariant space inside the optimal domain. The methods and techniques used involve interpolation theory, Banach function spaces and vector integration.

A detailed investigation is made of the continuity, the compactness and the spectrum of the Cesàro operator C acting on the weighted Banach sequence space c0(w) for a bounded, strictly positive weight w. New features arise in the weighted setting (eg. existence of eigenvalues, compactness, mean ergodicity) which are not present in the classical setting of c0.