Fourier extension operator

Informally, the Fourier extension operator is an operator that takes a function defined on the surface of the unit sphere in $R^{n}$ and applies the inverse fourier transform to produce a function on the entirety of $R^{n}$.

Definition

Formally, it is an operator ${\textstyle g\mapsto {\widehat {gd\sigma }}}$ such that $${\widehat {gd\sigma }}=\int _{S^{n-1}}{e^{ix\cdot \xi }g(\xi )d\sigma (\xi )}$$where $d\sigma$ denotes surface measure on the unit sphere ${\textstyle S^{n-1}}$, ${\textstyle x\in R^{n}}$, and ${\textstyle g\in L^{p}(R^{n})}$ for some ${\textstyle p\geq 1}$. Here, the notation ${\textstyle {\widehat {f}}}$ denotes the fourier transform of ${\textstyle f}$. In this Lebesgue integral, ${\textstyle \xi }$ is a member of ${\textstyle R^{n}}$ and ${\textstyle d\sigma (\xi )}$ is the Lebesgue analog of ${\textstyle dx}$.

The Fourier extension operator is the (formal) adjoint of the Fourier restriction operator $g\mapsto {\widehat {f}}\vline _{S^{n-1}}$, where the $\vline _{X}$ notation represents restriction to the set ${\textstyle X}$.

Restriction conjecture

The restriction conjecture states that ${\textstyle ||{\widehat {gd\sigma }}||_{L^{q}(R^{n})}\lesssim ||g||_{L^{p}(S^{n-1})}}$ for certain q and n, where ${\textstyle ||f||_{L^{p}}}$ represents the L^p norm, or ${\textstyle \int _{-\infty }^{\infty }{f(x)^{p}}}$ and ${\textstyle f\lesssim g}$ means that ${\textstyle f\leq Cg}$ for some constant ${\textstyle C}$.

The requirements of q and n set by the conjecture are that${\frac {1}{q}}<{\frac {n-1}{2n}}$ and ${\frac {1}{q}}\leq {\frac {n-1}{n+1}}{\frac {1}{p}}$.

The restriction conjecture has been proved for dimension ${\textstyle n=2}$ as of 2021.

See also

• Fourier transform § Restriction problems
• Mizohata–Takeuchi conjecture