We develop a new method suitable for establishing lower bounds on the ball measure of noncompactness of operators acting between considerably general quasinormed function spaces. This new method removes some of the restrictions oft-presented in the previous work. Most notably, the target function space need not be disjointly superadditive nor equipped with a norm. Instead, a property that is far more often at our disposal is exploited—namely the absolute continuity of the target quasinorm.

We use this new method to prove that limiting Sobolev embeddings into spaces of Brezis–Wainger type are so-called maximally noncompact, i.e. their ball measure of noncompactness is the worst possible.

Li et al. [A spectral radius type formula for approximation numbers of composition operators, J. Funct. Anal. 267(12) (2014), 4753-4774] proved a spectral radius type formula for the approximation numbers of composition operators on analytic Hilbert spaces with radial weights and on $H^{p}$ spaces, $p\geq 1$, involving Green capacity. We prove that their formula holds for a wide class of Banach spaces of analytic functions and weights.

Let L be a one-to-one operator of type ω in L2(ℝn), with ω∈[0, π/2), which has a bounded holomorphic functional calculus and satisfies the Davies–Gaffney estimates. Let p(·): ℝn→(0, 1] be a variable exponent function satisfying the globally log-Hölder continuous condition. In this article, the authors introduce the variable Hardy space $H_L^{p(\cdot )} ({\open R}^n)$ associated with L. By means of variable tent spaces, the authors establish the molecular characterization of $H_L^{p(\cdot )} ({\open R}^n)$. Then the authors show that the dual space of $H_L^{p(\cdot )} ({\open R}^n)$ is the bounded mean oscillation (BMO)-type space ${\rm BM}{\rm O}_{p(\cdot ),{\kern 1pt} L^ * }({\open R}^n)$, where L* denotes the adjoint operator of L. In particular, when L is the second-order divergence form elliptic operator with complex bounded measurable coefficients, the authors obtain the non-tangential maximal function characterization of $H_L^{p(\cdot )} ({\open R}^n)$ and show that the fractional integral L−α for α∈(0, (1/2)] is bounded from $H_L^{p(\cdot )} ({\open R}^n)$ to $H_L^{q(\cdot )} ({\open R}^n)$ with (1/p(·))−(1/q(·))=2α/n, and the Riesz transform ∇ L−1/2 is bounded from $H_L^{p(\cdot )} ({\open R}^n)$ to the variable Hardy space Hp(·)(ℝn).

We provide conditions under which a Riesz operator defined on a Banach space is a finite rank operator.

Let (X, ρ, μ)d, θ be a space of homogeneous type with d < 0 and θ ∈ (0, 1], b be a para-accretive function, ε ∈ (0, θ], ∣s∣ > ∈ and a0 ∈ (0, 1) be some constant depending on d, ∈ and s. The authors introduce the Besov space bBspq (X) with a0 > p ≧ ∞, and the Triebel-Lizorkin space bFspq (X) with a0 > p > ∞ and a0 > q ≧∞ by first establishing a Plancherel-Pôlya-type inequality. Moreover, the authors establish the frame and the Littlewood-Paley function characterizations of these spaces. Furthermore, the authors introduce the new Besov space b−1 Bs (X) and the Triebel-Lizorkin space b−1 Fspq (X). The relations among these spaces and the known Hardy-type spaces are presented. As applications, the authors also establish some real interpolation theorems, embedding theorems, T b theorems, and the lifting property by introducing some new Riesz operators of these spaces.

We investigate Riemann--Liouville processes $R_H$, with $H > 0$, and fractional Brownian motions $B_H$, for $0 < H < 1$, and study their small deviation properties in the spaces $L_q([0, 1], \mu)$. Of special interest here are thin (fractal) measures $\mu$, that is, those that are singular with respect to the Lebesgue measure. We describe the behavior of small deviation probabilities by numerical quantities of $\mu$, called mixed entropy numbers, characterizing size and regularity of the underlying measure. For the particularly interesting case of self-similar measures, the asymptotic behavior of the mixed entropy is evaluated explicitly. We also provide two-sided estimates for this quantity in the case of random measures generated by subordinators.

While the upper asymptotic bound for the small deviation probability is proved by purely probabilistic methods, the lower bound is verified by analytic tools concerning entropy and Kolmogorov numbers of Riemann--Liouville operators.

The asymptotic behaviour of entropy numbers of Trudinger–Strichartz embeddings of radial Besov spaces on ${\mathbb R}^n$ into exponential Orlicz spaces is calculated. Estimates of the entropy numbers as well as estimates of entropy numbers of Sobolev embeddings of radial Besov spaces are applied to spectral theory of certain pseudo-differential operators.