In this paper we obtain quite general and definitive forms for Hardy-Littlewood type inequalities. Moreover, when restricted to the original particular cases, our approach provides much simpler and straightforward proofs and we are able to show that in most cases the exponents involved are optimal. The technique we used is a combination of probabilistic tools and of an interpolative approach; this former technique is also employed in this paper to improve the constants for vector-valued Bohnenblust--Hille type inequalities.
The Hardy--Littlewood inequalities on $ell _{p}$ spaces provide optimal exponents for some classes of inequalities for bilinear forms on $ell _{p}$ spaces. In this paper we investigate in detail the exponents involved in Hardy--Littlewood type inequalities and provide several optimal results that were not achieved by the previous approaches. Our first main result asserts that for $q_{1},...,q_{m}>0$ and an infinite-dimensional Banach space $Y$ attaining its cotype $cot Y$, if begin{equation*} frac{1}{p_{1}}+...+frac{1}{p_{m}}<frac{1}{cot Y}, end{equation*} then the following assertions are equivalent: (a) There is a constant $C_{p_{1},...,p_{m}}^{Y}geq 1$ such that begin{equation*} left( sum_{j_{1}=1}^{infty }left( sum_{j_{2}=1}^{infty }cdots left( sum_{j_{m}=1}^{infty }leftVert A(e_{j_{1}},...,e_{j_{m}})rightVert ^{q_{m}}right) ^{frac{q_{m-1}}{q_{m}}}cdots right) ^{frac{q_{1}}{q_{2}} }right) ^{frac{1}{q_{1}}}leq C_{p_{1},...,p_{m}}^{Y}leftVert ArightVert end{equation*} for all continuous $m-$linear operators $A:ell _{p_{1}}times cdots times ell _{p_{m}}rightarrow Y.$ (b) The exponents $q_{1},...,q_{m}$ satisfy begin{equation*} q_{1}geq lambda _{m,cot Y}^{p_{1},...,p_{m}},q_{2}geq lambda _{m-1,cot Y}^{p_{2},...,p_{m}},...,q_{m}geq lambda _{1,cot Y}^{p_{m}}, end{equation*} where, for $k=1,...,m,$ begin{equation*} lambda _{m-k+1,cot Y}^{p_{k},...,p_{m}}:=frac{cot Y}{1-left( frac{1}{ p_{k}}+...+frac{1}{p_{m}}right) cot Y}. end{equation*} As an application of the above result we generalize to the $m$-linear setting one of the classical Hardy--Littlewood inequalities for bilinear forms. Our result is sharp in a very strong sense: the constants and exponents are optimal, even if we consider mixed sums.