Towards sharp Bohnenblust--Hille constants

Abstract

We investigate the optimality problem associated with the best constants in a class of Bohnenblust--Hille type inequalities for $m$--linear forms. While germinal estimates indicated an exponential growth, in this work we provide strong evidences to the conjecture that the sharp constants in the classical Bohnenblust--Hille inequality are universally bounded, irrespectively of the value of $m$; hereafter referred as the \textit{Universality Conjecture}. In our approach, we introduce the {notions of entropy and complexity}, designed to measure, to some extent, the complexity of such optimization problems. We show that the notion of entropy is critically connected to the Universality Conjecture; for instance, that if the entropy grows at most exponentially with respect to $m$, then the optimal constants of the $m$% --linear Bohnenblust--Hille inequality for real scalars are indeed bounded universally in $m$. It is likely that indeed the entropy grows as $4^{m-1}$, and in this scenario, we show that the optimal constants are precisely $2^{1-\frac{1}{m}} $. In the bilinear case, $m=2$, we show that any extremum of the Littlewood's $4/3$-inequality has entropy $4$ and complexity $2$, and thus we are able to classify all extrema of the problem. We also prove that, for any mixed $\left( \ell _{1},\ell _{2}\right) $% --Littlewood inequality, the entropy do grow exponentially and the sharp constants for such a class of inequalities are precisely $(\sqrt{2})^{m-1}$. In addition to the {notions of entropy and complexity}, the approach we develop in this work makes decisive use of a family of strongly non-symmetric $m$--linear forms, which has further consequences to the theory, as we explain herein.