Reduction of Opial-type inequalities to norm inequalities

Weighted Opial-type inequalities are shown to be equivalent to weighted norm inequalities for sublinear operators and for nearly positive operators. Examples involving the Hardy-Littlewood maximal function and the non-increasing rearrange- ment are presented. Opial-type inequalities are related to norm inequalities much as quadratic forms are related to bilinear forms. A linear operator T on Hilbert space gives rise to the bilinear form (f,g) 7! hTf,gi and the quadratic form f 7! hTf,fi. Duality shows that the norm of T and the norm of the bilinear form coincide and a standard polarization argument shows that this norm is equivalent to but not necessarily equal to the norm of the quadratic form, called the numerical radius of T. In this paper, far from the luxuries of Hilbert spaces and linear operators, we show that the equivalence of operator norm and numerical radius persists. The work is in response to Richard Brown's suggestion that Steven Bloom's result (2, The- orem 1) which gives the equivalence for positive operators should apply in greater generality. Opial-type inequalities have been much studied since Opial's original paper in 1960 and the papers (2), (3) and (4) include many references. After the main theorem showing equivalence of Opial-type and norm inequali- ties, an example involving the Hardy-Littlewood maximal function is included to illustrate that the equivalence cannot be taken in a pointwise sense. To show that the method can be readily applied to generate non-trivial inequal- ities from known norm inequalities we give a simple weight characterization of an Opial-type inequality for the non-increasing rearrangement.