The Hardy inequality in $ \mathbb{R}^{N} $ reads that, for all $ u\in C^{\infty}_{0}(\mathbb{R}^{N}) $ and $ N\geq 3 $,
and the constant $ \frac{(N-2) ^{2}}{4} $ in (1.1) is sharp.Recently, it was proved by Nazarov (see [12], Proposition 4.1 and [6]) that the following Hardy inequality is valid for $ f\in C^{\infty}_{0}(\mathbb{R}^{N}_{+}) $,
where $ \mathbb{R}^{N}_{+}=\{(x_{1},\cdots,x_{n})|x_{N}>0\} $, and the constant $ \frac{N^{2}}{4} $ is sharp. This shows that the Hardy constant jumps from $ \frac{(N-2) ^{2}}{4} $ to $ \frac{N^{2}}{4} $, when the singularity of the potential reaches the boundary. Inequality (1.2) was generalized by Su and Yang [14] to the cone $ \mathbb{R}_{k_+}^{N}:=\mathbb{R}^{N-k}×(\mathbb{R}_{+})^{k}=\{(x_{1},\cdots,x_{N})|x_{N-k+1}>0,\cdots,x_{N}>0\} $.For more information about this inequality and its applications, we refer to [2, 3] and the references therein.
The aim of this note is to prove similar Hardy type inequality on half spaces for Kohn's sublaplacian in H-type groups $ G $, a remarkable class of stratified groups of step two introduced by Kaplan [11]. Let $ G=(\mathbb{R}^{m}×\mathbb{R}^{n},\circ) $ with group law defined in Section 2. It was proved by Han et al. (see [10] and [5, 8, 9, 13] for analogous inequalities on Heisenberg group) that for $ u\in C^{\infty}_{0}(G) $, there holds
and the constant $ \frac{(Q-2) ^{2}}{4} $ is sharp, where $ Q=m+2n $, $ \rho(x,y)=(|x|^{4}+16|t|^{2})^{\frac{1}{4}} $ and $ \nabla_{G} $ is the the horizontal gradient associated with the Kohn's sublaplacian on $ G $ (for details, see Section 2). In this note we shall show when the singularity is on the boundary, the Hardy constant also jumps. In fact, we have the following:
Theorem 1.1 Let $ \alpha<Q-2 $. There holds, for all $ u\in C^{\infty}_{0}(\mathbb{R}^{m}× \mathbb{R}_{+}^{n}) $,
and the constant $ \frac{(Q+2-\alpha)^{2}}{4}+2\alpha $ in (1.4) is sharp.
We begin by describing the Lie groups and Lie algebras under consideration. For more information about H-type groups, we refer to [1, 11] and references therein. A H-type group $ G $ is a Carnot group of step two with the following properties: the Lie algebra $ \mathfrak g $ of $ G $ is endowed with an inner product $ \langle,\rangle $ such that, if $ \mathfrak z $ is the center of $ \mathfrak g $, then $ [\mathfrak z^{\perp},\mathfrak z^{\perp}]=\mathfrak z $ and moreover, for every fixed $ z\in\mathfrak z $, the map $ J_{z}: \mathfrak z^{\perp}\rightarrow\mathfrak z^{\perp} $ defined by
is an orthogonal map whenever $ \langle z,z\rangle=1 $. Set $ m=\dim\mathfrak z^{\perp} $ and $ n=\dim \mathfrak z $. In the sequel we shall fix on $ G $ a system of coordinates $ (x,t) $ and that the group law has the form
where the matrices $ \{U^{(j)}\}^{n}_{j=1} $ have the following two properties (see [1])
(1) $ U^{(j)} $ is a $ m× m $ Skew symmetric and orthogonal matrix, for every $ j=1,2,\cdots,n $;
(2) $ U^{(i)} U^{(j)}+U^{(j)}U^{(i)}=0 $ for every $ i,j\in\{1,2,\cdots,n\} $ with $ i\neq j $.
A easy computation shows that the vector field in the algebra $ \mathfrak{g} $ of $ N=(\mathbb{R}^{m+n},\circ) $ that agrees at the origin with $ \frac{\partial}{\partial x_{j}}(j=1,\cdots,m) $ is given by
and that $ \mathfrak{g} $ is spanned by the left-invariant vector fields $ X_{1},\cdots,X_{m},\frac{\partial}{\partial t_{1}},\cdots,\frac{\partial}{\partial t_{n}} $. We use the notation $ \nabla_{G}=(X_{1},\cdots,X_{m}) $ and call it the horizontal gradient. The horizontal gradient can be written in the form
with $ x=(x_{1},\cdots,x_{m})\;\;\textrm{and}\;\;\nabla_{x}=(\frac{\partial}{\partial x_{1}},\cdots,\frac{\partial}{\partial x_{m}}). $ The Kohn's sublaplacian on the H-type group $ G $ is given by
where $ \Delta_{x}=\sum\limits^{m}_{j=1}\left(\frac{\partial}{\partial x_{j}}\right)^{2} $ and $ \Delta_{t}=\sum\limits^{n}_{k=1}\left(\frac{\partial}{\partial t_{k}}\right)^{2}. $ Moreover, on functions $ f(x,t)=\widetilde{f}(|x|,t) $, we have
Hence
We also have
To get the last inequality, we use the fact ($ r=|x| $ in the equality below)
since $ U^{(j)} $ $ (1\leq j\leq n) $ is a skew-symmetric matric and
since $ U^{(j)}U^{(i)} $ is also skew-symmetric for every $ i\neq j $, for
For each real number $ λ>0 $, there is a dilation naturally associated with the group structure which is usually denoted as $ \delta_{λ}(\xi)=\delta_{λ}(x,t)=(λ x,λ^{2}t) $, $ \xi=(x,t)\in G $. However, for simplicity we will write $ λ \xi $ to denote $ \delta_{λ}(\xi) $. The Jacobian determinant of $ \delta_{λ} $ is $ λ^{Q} $, where $ Q=m+2n $ is the homogeneous dimension of $ G $. The anisotropic dilation structure on $ G $ introduces homogeneous norm $ \rho(\xi)=\rho(x,t)=(|x|^{4}+16|t|^{2})^{\frac{1}{4}}. $ With this norm, we can define the Heisenberg ball centered at $ \xi=(x,t) $ with radius $ R $,
For simplicity, we set
Given any $ \xi=(x,t)\neq \mathbf{0} $, set $ x^*=\frac{x}{\rho(\xi)} $, $ t^*=\frac{t}{\rho(\xi)^2} $ and $ \xi^*=(x^*,t^*) $. Then $ \xi^* \in\Sigma=\{v\in G,\rho(v)=1\} $, the Heisenberg unit sphere. Furthermore, we have the following polar coordinates on $ G $ (see [7]):
for all $ f\in L^{1}(G) $ and for $ \beta>-m $ (see [4]),
A function $ f $ on $ G $ is said to be radial if $ f(x,t)=\widetilde{f}(\rho) $. If $ f $ is radial, it is easy to check
and
Before the proof of main results, we need the following lemma.
Lemma 3.1 Let $ f\in C^{\infty}(G) $ be a radial function.There holds
(1) $ |\nabla_{G}(t_{n}f)|^{2}=t^{2}_{n}|f'|^{2}|\nabla_{G}\rho|^{2}+\frac{|x|^{2}}{4}f^{2}+\frac{t_{n}|x|^{2}}{4}\cdot\frac{\partial f^{2}}{\partial t_{n}} $;
(2) $ \Delta_{G}(t_{n}f)=t_{n}(f''+\frac{Q+3}{\rho}f')|\nabla_{G}\rho|^{2}. $
Proof (1) Since $ f $ is radial, we get, by (2.5),
It remains to use (2.7) and the desired result follows.
(2) By (2.3) and (2.8), we have
Now we can prove Theorem 1.1.
Proof of Theorem 1.1 First, we consider the case $ \alpha=0 $. Using the substitution $ u=t_{n}\rho^{-\frac{Q+2}{2}}f $, we get
Notice that, for $ g\in C^{\infty}(G) $,
We have, by Lemma 3.1 (2),
Therefore
Now we show the constant $ \frac{(Q+2) ^{2}}{4} $ in (3.1) is sharp. Consider the family of function $ g_{\varepsilon}=t_{n}f_{\varepsilon}(\rho) $, where
We take $ g_{\varepsilon} $ as the test function. By (2.4) and symmetry,
By Lemma 3.1 (1), we have, for $ \rho> \varepsilon $,
Since $ \displaystyle\int_{G\setminus B_{\varepsilon}}\left(\frac{|x|^{2}}{4}\rho^{-(Q+2) }-2(Q+2) \frac{|x|^{2}t^{2}_{n}}{\rho^{Q+6}}\right)dxdt=0 $, we have
This completes the proof.