Lior Aermark: Hardy and spectral inequalities for a class of partial differential operators

This thesis is devoted to the study of Hardy and spectral inequalities for the Heisenberg and the Grushin operators. It consists of five chapters. In chapter 1 we present basic notions and summarize the main results of the thesis. In chapters 2-4 we deal with different types of Hardy inequalities for Laplace and Grushin operators with magnetic and non-magnetic fields. It was shown in an article by Laptev and Weidl that for some magnetic forms in two dimensions, the Hardy inequality holds in its classical form. More precisely, by considering the Aharonov-Bohm magnetic potential, we can improve the constant in the respective Hardy inequality. In chapter 2 we establish an L^p-Hardy inequality related to Laplacians with magnetic fields with Aharonov-Bohm vector potentials. In chapter 3 we introduce a suitable notion of a vector field for the Grushin sub-elliptic operator G and obtain an improvement of the Hardy inequality, which was previously obtained in the paper of N. Garofallo and E. Lanconelli. In chapter 4 we find an L^p version of the Hardy inequality obtained in chapter 2. Finally in chapter 5 we aim to find the CLR and Lieb-Thirringbninequalities for harmonic Grushin-type operators. As the Grushin operator is non-elliptic, these inequalities will not take their classical form.