1. Introduction
Gevrey-type regularity was introduced in the study of fundamental solutions of the heat equation in [
1] and subsequently used to describe regularities stronger than smoothness (
-regularity) and weaker than analyticity. This property turns out to be important in the general theory of linear partial differential equations, such as hypoellipticity, local solvability, and propagation of singularities, cf. [
2]. In particular, the Cauchy problem for weakly hyperbolic linear partial differential equations (PDEs) can be well-posed in certain Gevrey classes, while at the same time being ill-posed in the class of analytic functions, as shown in [
2,
3].
Since there is a gap between Gevrey regularity and smoothness, it is important to study classes of smooth functions that do not belong to any Gevrey class. For example, Jézéquel [
4] proved that the trace formula for Anosov flows in dynamical systems holds for certain intermediate regularity classes, and Cicognani and Lorenz used a different intermediate regularity when studying strictly hyperbolic equations in [
5].
A systematic study of smoothness that goes beyond any Gevrey regularity was proposed in [
6,
7]. This was accomplished by introducing two-parameter dependent sequences of the form
, where
,
. These sequences give rise to classes of ultradifferentiable functions
, which differ from classical Carleman classes
(cf. [
8]), which are larger than Jézéquel’s classes, and which go beyond Komatsu’s approach to ultradifferentiable functions as described in, for example, [
9]. These classes, called Pilipović–Teofanov–Tomić classes in [
10], are a prominent example of the generalized matrix approach to ulradifferentiable functions. However, they provide asymptotic estimates in terms of the Lambert functions, which have proven to be useful in various contexts, as discussed in [
5,
11,
12].
Different aspects of the so-called extended Gevrey regularity, i.e., the regularity of ultradifferentiable functions from , have been studied in a dozen papers published in the last decade. Our aim is to offer a self-contained introduction to the subject and illuminate its main features. We provide proofs that, in general, simplify and complement those in the existing literature. Additionally, we present some new results, such as Proposition 2, Proposition 4, and Theorem 1 for the Beurling case, as well as Theorem 3.
This survey begins with preliminary
Section 2, which covers the main properties of defining sequences, the Lambert function, and the associated function to a given sequence. We emphasize the remarkable connection between the associated function and the Lambert
W function (see Theorem 1), which provides an elegant formulation of decay properties of the (short-time) Fourier transform of
, as demonstrated in Proposition 5 and Corollary 2. In
Section 3, we introduce the extended Gevrey classes
and the corresponding spaces of ultradistributions. We then present their main properties, such as inverse closedness (Theorem 1) and the Paley–Wiener type theorem (Theorem 3).
In
Section 4, we give an application of extended Gevrey regularity in micro-local analysis. More precisely, we introduce wave-front sets, which detect singularities that are “stronger” than classical
singularities and, at the same time, “weaker” than any Gevrey-type singularity.
To provide a flavor of possible applications of extended Gevrey regularity, in
Section 5, we briefly outline some results from [
5,
10]. More precisely, we present a result from [
5] concerning the well-posedness of strictly hyperbolic equations in
, and observations from [
10], where the extended Gevrey classes are referred to as Pilipović–Teofanov–Tomić classes and are considered within the extended matrix approach to ultradifferentiable classes.
We end this section by introducing some notation that will be used in the sequel.
Notation
We use the standard notation: , , , , , , denote sets of positive integers, non-negative integers, integers, real numbers, positive real numbers and complex numbers, respectively. The length of a multi-index is denoted by and . For we denote: and , where . Throughout the paper, we use the convention .
We write , for the Lebesgue spaces; denotes the Schwartz space of infinitely smooth () functions which, together with their derivatives, decay at infinity faster than any inverse polynomial. By we denote the dual of , the space of tempered distributions, and is the dual of , the space of compactly supported infinitely smooth functions.
We use brackets to denote the extension of the inner product on to the dual pairing between a test function space and its dual :
The notation means that for some and all x in the intersection of the domains for f and g. If and , then we write .
The Fourier transform of
given by
extends to
by the standard approximation procedure.
The convolution between is given by .
Translation, modulation, and dilation operators,
T,
M, and
D, respectively, when acting on
are defined by
,
. Then, for
the following relations hold:
The Fourier transform, convolution, T, M, and D are extended to other spaces of functions and distributions in a natural way.
2. Preliminaries
2.1. Defining Sequences via Komatsu
Komatsu’s approach to the theory of ultradistributions (see [
9]) is based on sequences of positive numbers
,
, which satisfy some of the following conditions:
(logarithmic convexity)
(stability under the action of ultradifferentiable operators/convolution)
(stability under the action of differentiable operators)
(strong non-quasi-analyticity)
(non-quasi-analyticity)
Note, that , and . In addition, implies , .
Let
be a positive monotone increasing sequence that satisfies
. Then
is an almost increasing sequence if there exists
such that
This property is related to inverse closedness in
, see [
13]. Note, that if
is an almost increasing sequence, then
. Indeed, for
and all
we obtain
, i.e.,
. Now
diverges to infinity by Stirling’s formula.
The Gevrey sequence , satisfies , , and . It is also an almost increasing sequence.
If
and
satisfy
, then we write
if there are the constants
and
(independent on
p) such that
If, instead, for each
there exists
such that (
2) holds, then we write
Assume that satisfies and . Then, .
Let
denote the set of all sequences of positive numbers monotonically increasing to infinity. For a given sequence
and
we consider
It is easy to see that if satisfies and , then satisfies and as well. In addition, one can find so that satisfies if does. This follows from the next lemma.
Lemma 1. Let be given. Then, there exists such that , , and Proof. It is enough to consider the sequence
given by
and inductively
Then,
and (
3) holds. We refer to [
14] (Lemma 2.3) for details. □
2.2. Defining Sequences for Extended Gevrey Regularity
To extend the class of Gevrey-type ultradifferentiable functions we consider two-parameter sequences of the form , , .
From Stirling’s formula, for any (fixed)
, and
, we can find
(independent of
p) such that
and so it follows that there exists
such that
The main properties of
are collected in the next lemma (cf. [
6] (Lemmas 2.2 and 3.1)). The proof is given in the
Appendix A.
Lemma 2. Let , , , and , . Then, the following properties hold:
for some constant ,
for some constant ,
Remark 1. From the proof of it follows that does not satisfy , and consequently is violated as well. One might expect that instead, the sequence satisfiesfor some constant . However, if we assume that (5) holds for, e.g., , then, for , we obtainwhich givesa contradiction. Thus, is a suitable alternative to when considering . Let
,
,
, and
. If
is chosen as in Lemma 1, then the sequence
given by
satisfies
,
,
, and
.
We note that if , , , then the sequence is an almost increasing sequence since and for all such that Here, denotes the smallest integer greater than or equal to x.
2.3. The Lambert Function
The
Lambert W function is defined as the inverse of
,
. By
, we denote the restriction of its principal branch to
. It is used as a convenient tool to describe asymptotic behavior in different contexts. We refer to [
15] for a review of some applications of the Lambert
W function in pure and applied mathematics, and to the recent monograph [
16] for more details and generalizations. It is noteworthy that the Lambert function describes the precise asymptotic behavior of the associated function to the sequence
. This fact was first observed in [
17].
Some basic properties of the Lambert function W are given below:
, , is continuous, increasing and concave on ,
and , ,
The following estimates hold:
with the equality if and only if
, see [
18].
Note, that
implies
By using
we obtain
and, therefore,
for any
. We refer to [
15,
16] for more details about the Lambert
W function.
2.4. Associated Functions
Let
be an increasing sequence of positive numbers which satisfies
, and
. Then, the
Carleman associated function to the sequence
is defined by
This function is introduced in the study of quasi-analytic functions, see, e.g., [
19]. We use the notation from [
20].
In Komatsu’s treatise of ultradistributions [
9], the associated function to
is instead given by
Lemma 3. Let be an increasing sequence of positive numbers that satisfies , and , and let the functions μ and T be given by (7) and (8), respectively. Then, When
,
,
, an explicit calculation gives
Thus, (
9) implies that there exist constants
, and
such that
see also [
20] (Chapter IV,
Section 2.1). We note that
can be used in (
13) instead of the Gevrey sequence
,
, to define Gevrey spaces
,
, see [
2] (Proposition 1.4.2).
By using (
8) we define the associated function to the sequence
,
,
, as follows:
It is a remarkable fact that can be expressed via the Lambert W function.
Theorem 1. Let , , , and , , and let be given by (10). Thenwhere the hidden constants depend on σ only. Proof. The proof follows from estimates (30) in the proof of [
21] (Proposition 2). More precisely, it can be shown that
for
, and suitable constants
. □
We also noticed that
(from
Section 2.3) implies
2.5. Associated Function as a Weight Function
The approach to ultradifferentiable functions via defining sequences is equivalent to the Braun–Meise–Taylor approach based on weight functions, when the defining sequences satisfy conditions
and
see [
22,
23]. Since
does not satisfy
to compare the two approaches in [
21], the authors used the technique of weighted matrices, see [
24]. One of the main results from [
21] can be stated as follows.
Proposition 1. Let , , , and , and let be the associated function to the sequence . Then, , where ω is a weight function.
Recall that a weight function is a non-negative, continuous, even and increasing function defined on , , if the following conditions hold:
()
()
() i.e., ,
() is convex.
Some classical examples of weight functions are as follows:
Moreover,
is a weight function if and only if
.
We refer to [
24] for the weighted matrices approach to ultradifferentiable functions. It is introduced in order to treat both Braun–Meise–Taylor and Komatsu methods in a unified way, see also
Section 5.2.
3. Extended Gevrey Regularity
3.1. Extended Gevrey Classes and Their Dual Spaces
Recall that the Gevrey space
,
, consists of functions
such that for every compact set
there are constants
and
satisfying
for all
and for all
.
In a similar fashion we introduce new classes of smooth functions by using defining sequences , , , .
Definition 1. Let there be given , , and let , , .
The extended Gevrey class of Roumieu type is the set of all such that for every compact set there are constants and satisfyingfor all and for all The extended Gevrey class of Beurling type is the set of all such that for every compact set and for all there is a constant satisfyingfor all and for all The Roumieu space
is a countable projective limit of countable inductive limits of Banach spaces (i.e., a so-called (PLB)-space), and the Beurling space
is a Fréchet space, we refer to [
6] for details. In particular, they are nuclear spaces, see [
6] (Theorem 3.1).
Note, that (
4), (
13)–(
15) imply
where ↪ denotes continuous and dense inclusion.
The subspace of functions () whose support is contained in some compact set is denoted by ().
We use the abbreviated notation for or to denote or , and similarly for .
Next, we give an equivalent description of extended Gevrey classes by using sequences from
, see
Section 2.2. We note that such descriptions are important when dealing with integral transforms of ultradifferentiable functions and related ultradistributions, cf. [
14,
25,
26]. The result follows from a lemma which is a modification of [
26] (Lemma 3.4), and [
25] (Lemma 2.2.1).
Put (the greatest integer part of ).
Lemma 4. Let there be given , a sequence of positive numbers , , and putThen, the following is true. - (i)
There exists such that - (ii)
There exists such that
Note, that in (
14) and (
15) we could put
instead of
(this follows from the simple inequality
,
).
Proposition 2. Let there be given , , and let , , . Then, the following is true:
- (i)
if and only if for every compact set , and for any and given by (16), there exists such thatfor all , and all . - (ii)
if and only if for every compact set there is a sequence and a constant satisfyingfor all and for all where given by (16).
Proposition 2 follows from Lemma 4.
We end this subsection by introducing spaces of ulradistributions as dual spaces of
,
,
. In
Section 3.5 we will prove a Paley–Wiener type theorem for such ultradistributions.
Definition 2. Let and . Then, (resp. ) if there exists a compact set K in and for every there exists a constant (resp. there exist constants ) such thatand denotes the standard dual pairing. In a similar way is the dual space of .
3.2. Example of a Compactly Supported Function
The non-quasianalyticity condition provides the existence of nontrivial compactly supported functions in which can be formulated as follows:
Proposition 3. Let . For every there exists such that , , and .
Proof. We give a proof when , and for the proof follows by taking the tensor product.
Since , is closed under dilation and multiplication by a constant, it is enough to show the result for , and set .
From
for any
and any given
, it follows that there exists a sequence of nonnegative integers
such that
Thus, the sequence
,
, given by
satisfies
Let
be a non-negative and even function such that
,
, and set
,
. Then, we define the sequence of functions
by
Note, that
and there exists a constant
such that
when
.
Let there be given and . Then, we choose so that , and .
By using (
21) and the fact that
implies
for some
, we obtain
where
C depends on
.
The sequence
is a Cauchy sequence for every
. Thus, it converges to a function
that satisfies
for every
, and all
. Therefore,
for every
, and by the construction
,
and
, which completes the proof. □
Remark 2. The construction in Proposition 3 provides a function in which does not belong to any Gevrey class. This can be justified as follows. First, we note that the construction of ϕ in Proposition 3 can be modified to obtain (Kronecker Delta), (cf. [7] (Example 3.1)). Then, we may take a so-called characteristic function ψ belonging to a Roumieu class of ultradifferentiable functions which is strictly larger than and strictly smaller than (see, e.g., [27] (Theorem 1)). In view of the product rule and Proposition 4 given below, it follows that . 3.3. Algebra Property
We remark that the stability properties given in this and the next subsection are recently commented on in [
10], by using completely different techniques. Our aim is to give here independent and direct proofs for the convenience of the reader.
Since satisfies properties and we have the following.
Proposition 4. is closed under the pointwise multiplication of functions and under the (finite order) differentiation.
Proof. Let us prove that
is closed under pointwise multiplication, since its closedness under the differentiation follows from
. We refer to [
6] for the Roumieu case
.
Let
. Let
K be a compact subset of
. Then, for every
there exist constants
and
such that
hold for all
. For simplicity, assume that
, and the proof for
is similar.
By the Leibniz formula and
we have
By choosing
we obtain
and obtain
with
.
Thus, for any given
we can choose
to obtain
where
depends on
K and
, that is,
. □
3.4. Inverse Closedness and Composition
We need some preparation related to the decompositions that appear when using the generalized Faà di Bruno formula.
For multiindices
we write
if there exists
such that
and
We say that
is decomposed into parts
with multiplicities
, if
where
. Note, that
and
.
The triple
is called the decomposition of
and the set of all decompositions of the form (
22) is denoted by
.
For smooth functions
and
, the generalized Faà di Bruno formula is given by
The total number
of different decompositions of a multiindex
given by (
22) can be estimated as follows:
cf. [
28] (Remark 2.2).
Theorem 2. Let , and . If and is such that , then .
Proof. The proof of Theorem 2 for the Roumieu case is given in [
7], so we prove the Beurling case here.
Let be fixed. Put and note that I is a compact set, .
For
and
by the Faá di Bruno formula we have that for every
there are constants
such that
where we used
,
,
.
By choosing
and
we obtain
where
,
.
Next, we use [
10] (Theorem 5.2
v)) which states that the weight matrix
satisfies the
property (cf. [
10] (p. 6)). This means that for any
there exist
and
such that
Finally, we need the estimate
which is proved in [
7] (p. 2770).
By (
24)–(
26), it follows that for arbitrary
we can choose
such that
where
.
Therefore, for any given
by choosing
we obtain
where
. Thus
. □
As a consequence of Theorem 2 we conclude the following:
Corollary 1. Let , and . Then, the extended Gevrey class is inverse-closed in .
3.5. Paley–Wiener Theorems
Let and let denote the set of compactly supported elements from The dual space of is given by , and similarly for .
Since we are interested in the intersection of
with respect to
, we note that if
and
then for every
there exists
such that
This simple observation will be used in the proof of Theorem 3, see also [
6].
A more general statement than Proposition 5 is given in [
17] (Theorem 3.1).
Proposition 5. Let , and let Then, , the Fourier transform of f, is an analytic function, and for every there exists a constant such thatwhere W denotes the Lambert function. Proof. The analyticity of
follows from the classical Paley–Wiener theorem, cf. [
8]. It remains to prove (
28).
Let
, and let
K denote the support of
f. Since
, by Definition 1 for every
we obtain the following estimate:
for a suitable constant
. Now, the relation between the sequence
and its associated function
given by (
10) implies that
for suitable
, where we have also used the inequality
, for every
and
. Then, from the left-hand side of (
12) we obtain
with
. For any given
we choose
, to obtain (
28), which proves the claim. □
We proceed with the Paley–Wiener theorem for .
- (i)
If then there are constants such that - (ii)
If and if for every there exists such thatthen .
Proof. Fix
so that
. By applying (
19) to
,
, we obtain
where we used
,
,
, and
for suitable
, see (
27). Now the statement follows from (
12).
By (
27), it is sufficient to prove that for every
there exists constant
such that
We take
as in (
12) and for arbitrary
let us set
in (
29). Then, the Fourier inversion formula, together with (
12) and (
29), implies that there are constants
, such that
for suitable
, where the last integral is finite due to the property
of the Lambert
W function. Then, (
30) follows from (
10) with
. □