A sharp rearrangement principle in Fourier space and symmetry results for PDEs with arbitrary order


Abstract in English

We prove sharp inequalities for the symmetric-decreasing rearrangement in Fourier space of functions in $mathbb{R}^d$. Our main result can be applied to a general class of (pseudo-)differential operators in $mathbb{R}^d$ of arbitrary order with radial Fourier multipliers. For example, we can take any positive power of the Laplacian $(-Delta)^s$ with $s> 0$ and, in particular, any polyharmonic operator $(-Delta)^m$ with integer $m geq 1$. As applications, we prove radial symmetry and real-valuedness (up to trivial symmetries) of optimizers for: i) Gagliardo-Nirenberg inequalities with derivatives of arbitrary order, ii) ground states for bi- and polyharmonic NLS, and iii) Adams-Moser-Trudinger type inequalities for $H^{d/2}(mathbb{R}^d)$ in any dimension $d geq 1$. As a technical key result, we solve a phase retrieval problem for the Fourier transform in $mathbb{R}^d$. To achieve this, we classify the case of equality in the corresponding Hardy-Littlewood majorant problem for the Fourier transform in $mathbb{R}^d$.

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