1. Introduction
Harmonic analysis is one of the most influential branches of mathematics, where the study of the boundedness of operators plays a central role. Many classical and modern results in this field revolve around the boundedness properties of integral and maximal operators in various function spaces. Among these operators, the Hardy–Littlewood maximal operator is particularly significant due to its ability to control singular integrals, providing a fundamental tool for harmonic analysis. Since the 1970s, weighted norm inequalities for the Hardy–Littlewood maximal operator
have been extensively studied, with significant contributions from Muckenhoupt [
1] and Sawyer [
2,
3], laying the groundwork for weighted analysis in Lebesgue spaces.
In [
4], the authors studied the harmonic analysis of Lebesgue spaces with variable exponents
, establishing sufficient conditions for the maximal operator
to be bounded on
spaces. Furthermore, they highlighted that the study of the boundedness of operators in variable Lebesgue spaces is a crucial topic in harmonic analysis. In the classical
spaces, the norm convergence of an approximate identity is relatively straightforward to prove, whereas pointwise convergence requires a more sophisticated argument using the maximal operator. In contrast, for variable Lebesgue spaces, this situation is reversed: pointwise convergence is an immediate consequence of classical results, while norm convergence requires the boundedness of the maximal operator.
Another class of operators that has attracted substantial attention in recent years is the family of Bessel–Riesz operators. These operators are closely related to the study of fractional integrals and have been analyzed extensively in Lebesgue and Morrey spaces. Kurata et al. [
5] investigated the boundedness of integral operators with Bessel–Riesz kernels in generalized Morrey spaces and explored their connections to the Schrödinger operator. In [
6,
7], Idris et al. extended the study of the Bessel–Riesz operator and generalized Bessel–Riesz operator to Morrey spaces in Euclidean spaces, while Saba et al. [
8,
9] further examined their behavior in Lebesgue and Morrey spaces within measure metric spaces. These studies highlight the growing interest in understanding the boundedness of integral operators beyond the classical Euclidean setting.
Previous research on the Bessel–Riesz operator has primarily concentrated on classical Lebesgue spaces. Building upon the work of David Cruz-Uribe [
4], who extended the boundedness of the Hardy–Littlewood maximal operator
to variable Lebesgue spaces
, we explore the boundedness of the Bessel–Riesz operator
in these spaces. Unlike classical cases, our results depend on specific conditions, which is why we consider different scenarios throughout this manuscript. The structure of this paper is as follows. In
Section 1 and
Section 2, we provide the necessary background on variable Lebesgue spaces and the Bessel–Riesz operator, which serve as the foundation for our main results.
Section 3 is dedicated to formulating and proving the key results concerning the boundedness of the Bessel–Riesz operator
in variable Lebesgue spaces
. Specifically, in Theorem 6, we establish the boundedness of
from
to
, while, in Theorems 7 and 8, we prove its boundedness from
to
. Finally, we conclude the manuscript with remarks in
Section 4.
2. Preliminaries
Throughout the paper, will be a subset of .
Given a set
and
, denote the collection of the Lebesgue measurable functions
. The elements of
are called exponent functions. Given any
a set
, we suppose
and
If there is no confusion in the domain, we shall simply denote
and
. Given any exponent function
, the conjugate exponent function
of
is defined as
Further,
The following results on variable Lebesgue spaces
have been taken from [
4].
Definition 1. Let be an exponent function with and let h be a Lebesgue measurable function; we define the modular functional related to as We shall write simply or for the modular functional.
Proposition 1. Suppose that and an exponent function . Then, the following properties hold for the modular functional η.
For a function h, we have and also .
⇔ for a.e. .
If , then for a.e. .
η is convex, i.e., for with , we have η is order-preserving, i.e., if a.e., then .
If, for some , , then the function is continuous and decreasing on . Furthermore, as .
Definition 2. Let , and we denote a variable Lebesgue space by and define the set of all functions h that are Lebesgue-measurable and for some , i.e., Definition 3. Suppose that and let h be a measurable function; then, the following formula defines a norm on making it a normed space. Proposition 2. Suppose that and let be any exponent function from the collection If then ∀ and we have Moreover, for , the reverse inequalities hold true.
Proposition 3. Suppose that and let be any exponent function from the collection suppose that such that In this case, we have that Moreover, if then for all non-trivial
Corollary 1. Let be any exponent function from the collection and Let , and we have, in this case, Moreover, for , and we have Further, if the exponent function is a constant, then , and these inequalities reduce to the following identity:which is the norm on classical Lebesgue spaces . Theorem 1. [Hölder’s Inequality] Let and be any exponent function from the collection . Then, ∀, ; we have andwhere denotes the conjugate exponent function of and , a constant that depends on . Definition 4. Given any and a measurable function that maps , the exponent function is said to be locally log-Hölder continuous and is denoted as , if we have a constant and ∀ with , is said to be log-Hölder continuous at infinity and is denoted as , if we have constants , and ∀, When is log-Hölder continuous both locally and at infinity, we denote this as .
Definition 5. Suppose that we have a function ; the Hardy–Littlewood maximal operator of h is denoted by and is defined as Here, the supremum is calculated over all such cubes with sides parallel to the coordinate axes and containing .
The characterization of the boundedness of the Hardy–Littlewood maximal operator
in weighted Lebesgue spaces
was addressed by Muckenhoupt [
1] and further developed by Sawyer [
2,
3] in 1970.
Theorem 2. Let Suppose that and are non-negative measurable functions. Then, the following are equivalent.
There exists such that, for all The pair satisfies the following inequality—that is, there exists such that ∀ cubes Q, where and is the conjugate exponent of
If , then and are equivalent to the following.
w satisfies the following inequality—that is, there exists such that, for all cubes
As in the continuation of the above results, the boundedness of the maximal operator
is extended to
spaces in [
4].
Theorem 3. Let there be any exponent function from the collection . Suppose . Then, the following inequality holds: Furthermore, if , it follows that Here, the constant C depends on n, the log-Hölder continuity of , and the values of and .
Remark 1. Suppose that ; in this case, the hypothesis is equivalent to assuming .
On the other hand, similar to the maximal operators, several other integral operators have been a significant focus of research for the past fifty years. Among these operators, the Bessel–Riesz operator is particularly notable. Therefore, we now shift our discussion to the Bessel–Riesz operator.
Definition 6. Let and . The Bessel–Riesz operator is denoted as and is defined through the convolution of a function with the Bessel–Riesz kernel aswhere and zero when Note that the kernel
is the product of two distinct kernels, i.e.,
∀
According to [
10],
and
are recognized as the Bessel kernel and the Riesz kernel, respectively. Thus, the kernel
is referred to as the Bessel–Riesz kernel, and the corresponding operator
is known as the Bessel–Riesz operator. Significant research has been carried out on the boundedness of this singular integral operator
under various conditions. For example, in classical Lebesgue spaces, the boundedness of
can be directly established by Young’s inequality, as shown in [
6,
11].
Lemma 1 (Young’s inequality for convolution).
Suppose that and If and , then such that Further results on the boundedness of the Bessel–Riesz operator in classical Lebesgue spaces for kernel
and zero when
are provided in [
11].
Lemma 2. Let and then, where
Theorem 4. Let and Assume that the kernel and for then, there exists a positive constant c such that Theorem 5. Let and Assume that the kernel with and for then, there exists a positive constant such thatwhere However, for variable Lebesgue spaces, the scenario is different. Young’s inequality for convolution does not hold true in such spaces, as highlighted in [
4]. The boundedness of the Bessel–Riesz operator
in variable Lebesgue spaces
is the main topic discussed in this manuscript. We use the boundedness of the maximal operator
in
spaces, Holder’s inequality, and the traditional dyadic decomposition technique to analyze the boundedness of
in these spaces. In Lemma 3, we discuss the membership of the Bessel–Riesz kernel in Lebesgue spaces with variable exponents
, while Lemmas 4–7 provide useful estimations that will be applied in our main results. Furthermore, in Theorem 6, we establish the boundedness of the Bessel–Riesz operator
from
to
. In Theorem 7, we establish the boundedness of
from
to
without any constraint on the maximal function. Theorem 8 presents the results in a broader context, examining the boundedness of the Bessel–Riesz operator from
to
under some constraints on the maximal function. Additionally, we discuss how our results are more generalized in nature and show how the corresponding results in classical Lebesgue spaces are special cases of our results. Moreover, in certain scenarios, our results even cover cases that do not exist in the literature for the classical framework.
3. Main Results
Suppose that
. The Bessel–Riesz operator is defined as
We now present and prove our results concerning the boundedness of the Bessel–Riesz operator. Throughout this section, we assume that and
Theorem 6. Let , with and ; then, the Bessel–Riesz operator is bounded.
Proof. Since
and
, there exists a constant
such that
Now, for any
and
, we have
To estimate
, we proceed as follows:
Now, we estimate
as follows:
Combining estimates (
8) and (
9), we obtain
For any
, we have
Further, by definition of the modular, we obtain
Thus,
. Therefore,
Now, by following the boundedness of the maximal operator, we obtain
□
Lemma 3. Let and ; then, for Proof. By definition of the modular, we have
For
, we can write
By adhering to the conditions on
and
, both integrals on the right-hand side are finite. Therefore, we have
Hence, . A similar expression holds for , with the only difference being the factor replacing . □
Lemma 4. Let ; then, there exists an integer depending upon such that, for any and, for any Proof. By definition of the modular, we have
and there exists an integer
depending upon
r such that
and
surely,
will be a positive integer if
and a negative integer if
and
if
Thus, for
we have
where
and
Thus, for any
we have
Similarly, for any
we have
□
Lemma 5. Let and then, there exists an integer depending upon such that, for any and, for any Proof. Since
and
by Propositions 2 and 3, we obtain
or
and clearly
and we can write
Thus, by following Lemma 4, we obtain the required results. □
Lemma 6. Let and then, there exists an integer depending upon such that, for any and, for any Proof. Since
and
by Propositions 2 and 3, we obtain
or
thus, by following Lemma 4, we obtain the required results. □
Lemma 7. For any and the following estimation holds for the Bessel–Riesz operator: Proof. Since, for any
and
by definition of the Bessel–Riesz operator, we have
there exists an integer
depending upon
r such that
and
Thus, we have
Now, first, we estimate
:
To estimate
, we proceed as follows:
By using Hölder’s inequality, we obtain
By simplifying and using
, we obtain
Thus, by combining (
18) and (
20), we obtain
□
Theorem 7. Let and with Range If there exists a constant such that and a.e. with , then the Bessel–Riesz operator is bounded. Further, for any , there exists a constant , such that, for we obtainand, for we obtain Proof. Since
and
the Hardy–Littlewood maximal operator
is bounded, and there exists a constant
such that, for any
we have
We can write
further since variable Lebesgue space
is a vector space, and we also have
Thus, without loss of generality, we can choose any fixed
such that
Further, by following the definition of the norm in
we obtain
The case is trivial for .
Now, for any
and any non-zero function
by following Lemma 7, we obtain
Now, before we proceed further, first, we derive the following expression, which we shall use later:
We choose
where
Then, from (
25), it follows that
where
, and we have
Hence,
and we obtain
Now, we discuss two cases depending upon the norm of the Bessel–Riesz kernel.
Case 1. If
then, by following (
12), we have
Further, by following (
13) and the fact that
, we obtain
By (
24), (
27) and (
28), we obtain
Thus, by following (
26), we obtain
or
thus,
Case 2. If
by following (
14) and using a similar procedure as in Case 1, we obtain
Further, by following (
15), we obtain
By (
24), (
30) and (
31), we obtain
Now, by following (
26), we obtain
thus,
□
Corollary 2. If all exponent functions in Theorem 6 become constants, such that and with , the expression becomes Further, the relation becomes Thus, by combining both, we obtain In such a situation, our results coincide with the results given in [6,11] for classical Lebesgue spaces and proven by using Young’s inequality. Remark 2. Since Theorem 7 holds only when a.e. and , the result does not hold if the relation a.e. fails for . Therefore, in Theorem 8, we discuss the cases where the boundedness holds for all possible scenarios of the exponent functions. However, in this case, additional conditions on the maximal function in terms of the norm are required, which were not needed in Theorem 7. Furthermore, Theorem 8 does not cover Theorem 7 because we impose conditions on the maximal function in Theorem 8, while Theorem 7 does not depend on such conditions. In the case of equality, Theorem 7 becomes a special case of Theorem 8.
Definition 7. Let ; then, the pair of exponent functions is said to satisfy the boundedness property if, for any , the exponents satisfy a.e. and, for any , the exponents satisfy a.e.
Theorem 8. Let , and let the pair satisfy the boundedness property and , with ; then, the Bessel–Riesz operator is bounded. Further, for any , there exists a constant , such that, for we haveand, for we have Proof. The case is trivial for .
Now, for any
and any non-zero function
by Lemma 7, we have
Thus, by using
we obtain
Now, to proceed further, first, we simplify the following for
where
so
where
For any
we discuss the following two possibilities. If
then
a.e. This implies that
a.e. and we obtain from (
36)
If
, then
a.e.; thus,
a.e. and we obtain from (
36)
Thus, following from (
37) and (
38), for any
we have
Case 1. If
then, by Lemma 5 and relation (
35), we obtain
By following (
38), we obtain, for any
or
thus,
Since, by the boundedness of the maximal function, we have
we obtain
Case 2. If
by Lemma 6 and relation (
35), and then by the convergence of the geometric series, we obtain
By using the value of
from (
38) for any
we have
or
□
Remark 3. If we choose to estimate T in Theorem 8, then, by following a similar procedure, we obtain the same results.
Remark 4. When , it follows from Theorem 8 that . This relation is valid only when , which implies and thus is constant. However, for , Theorem 7 does not hold in the case . Therefore, Theorem 7 is not covered by Theorem 8. Additionally, in Theorem 8, we require additional conditions on .