Optimal constants of smoothing estimates for the 3D Dirac equation

Abstract Recently,Ikoma [8] considered optimal constants and extremisers for the 2-dimensional Dirac equation using the spherical harmonics decomposition. Though its argument is valid in any dimensions $$d \ge 2$$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:mrow> <mml:mi>d</mml:mi> <mml:mo>≥</mml:mo> <mml:mn>2</mml:mn> </mml:mrow> </mml:math> , the case $$d \ge 3$$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:mrow> <mml:mi>d</mml:mi> <mml:mo>≥</mml:mo> <mml:mn>3</mml:mn> </mml:mrow> </mml:math> remains open since it leads us to too complicated calculation: determining all eigenvalues and eigenvectors of infinite dimensional matrices. In this paper, we give optimal constants and extremisers of smoothing estimates for the 3-dimensional Dirac equation. In order to prove this, we construct a certain orthonormal basis of spherical harmonics. With respect to this basis, infinite dimensional matrices actually become block diagonal and so that eigenvalues and eigenvectors can be easily found. As applications, we obtain the equivalence of the smoothing estimate for the Schrödinger equation and the Dirac equation, and improve a result by Ben-Artzi and Umeda [3].