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Weighted Cauchy transforms in Clifford

analysis
a

R. Abreu-Blaya , J. Bory-Reyes , T. Moreno-Garca & D. PeaPea

Faculty of Mathematics and Informatics, University of Holgun,

Holgun 80100, Cuba
b

Department of Mathematics, University of Oriente, Santiago de

Cuba 90500, Cuba
Published online: 10 Oct 2011.

To cite this article: R. Abreu-Blaya , J. Bory-Reyes , T. Moreno-Garca & D. Pea-Pea (2006):

Weighted Cauchy transforms in Clifford analysis, Complex Variables and Elliptic Equations: An
International Journal, 51:5-6, 397-406
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Complex Variables and Elliptic Equations

Vol. 51, Nos. 56, MayJune 2006, 397406

Weighted Cauchy transforms in

Clifford analysisx

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R. ABREU-BLAYA*y, J. BORY-REYESz, T. MORENO-GARCIAy,

and D. PENA-PENAy
yFaculty of Mathematics and Informatics, University of Holgu n, Holgu n 80100, Cuba
zDepartment of Mathematics, University of Oriente, Santiago de Cuba 90500, Cuba
Communicated by F. Brackx
(Received in final form 15 November 2005)
Let
be an n-dimensional rectifiable jFj-regular surface in Rn1 . Let u be a continuous R0, n valued function on
, where R0, n is the Clifford algebra associated with Rn . Then we prove
that the weighted Cliffordian Cauchy transform

CF
ux

:

y
x

yFyuydHn y,
An1 jy
xjn1

x2
=

has continuous limit values on
if and only if the truncated integrals

S F
, uz

y
z

yFyuy
uzdHn y
n1

nfjy
zjg An1 jy
zj

converge uniformly in
as  ! 0.
Keywords: Clifford analysis; Cauchy transform; Regular surfaces
Mathematics Subject Classifications 2000: Primary 30E20; Secondary 30E25; 30G35; 45B20
La Educacion empieza con la vida y no acaba sino con la muerte. El cuerpo es siempre el mismo y decae
con la edad; la mente cambia sin cesar y se enriquece y perfecciona con los anos. Pero las cualidades
esenciales del caracter, lo original y energico de cada hombre, se deja ver desde la infancia en un acto,
en una idea, en una mirada (. . .) En el mismo hombre suelen ir unidos un corazon peque~no y un talento
grande. Pero todo hombre tiene el deber de cultivar su inteligencia, por respeto a si mismo y al mundo.
Lo general es que el hombre no logre en la vida un bienestar permanente sino despues de muchos anos de
esperar con paciencia y de ser bueno, sin cansarse nunca. El ser bueno da gusto, y lo hace a uno fuerte
y feliz
J. Mart -Perez, 1853-1895, Cuba.

*Corresponding author. Email: rabreu@facinf.uho.edu.cu

xDedicated to Richard Delanghe on the occasion of his 65th birthday.
Complex Variables and Elliptic Equations
ISSN 1747-6933 print/ISSN 1747-6941 online 2006 Taylor & Francis
http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals
DOI: 10.1080/17476930500481251

398

R. Abreu-Blaya et al.

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1. Introduction
The properties of the boundary values of the Cauchy transform associated with
Clifford analysis (Cliffordian Cauchy transform) appear to have first been examined
for compact Liapunov surfaces by Iftimie [1]. He proved in 1965 that they have
Holder continuous limit values for any Holder continuous function, and established
the PlemeljSokhotski formulae. In [2] and [3] the first two authors of this article
showed how these statements can be generalized to (AhlforsDavid) regular surfaces
in R3 and Rn respectively. More recently these results have been applied to deal with
analogues of the Cauchy type decomposition for harmonic multivector fields and
harmonic differential forms in the sense of HodgedeRham, see [4, 5].
The question on the existence of continuous limit values of the Cliffordian Cauchy
transform for merely continuous functions has been treated for instance in [6]. In [7]
this question is optimally answered for the case of n-rectifiable regular surfaces, i.e., a
necessary and sufficient condition for the existence of continuous limit values of the
Cauchy transform is established.
A great deal of Clifford analysis has been devoted to generalize the Cauchy transform
in more general settings. In this article we discuss a reasonably interesting alternative of
the Cliffordian Cauchy transform in connection with the PlemeljSokhotsky formulae
involving geometry of sets, measures and densities ratios. This attempt generalizes the
case treated in the aforementioned paper [7].
This time we are interested in the study of the boundary values of a kind of weighted
Cauchy transform on n-rectifiable surfaces which satisfy a regularity condition with
respect to a weighted Hausdorff measure, the so-called !-regular surfaces, see [8].
Therefore, Theorem 6 in [7] becomes a particular case of our main result stated
in Theorem 3.2.
Let us give a brief description of the contents of this article.
In section 2 we recall some well-known, though not necessarily familiar, basic
properties in Clifford algebras and Clifford analysis. In section 3 we introduce the
notion of !-regular surfaces based on the definition of weighted Hausdorff measure.
We also introduce the weighted Cauchy transform and state our main result.
Section 4 is devoted to presenting and proving some auxiliary statements. Section 5
contains the proof of the main result.

2. Clifford algebras and monogenic functions

The real Clifford algebra associated with Rn endowed with the Euclidean metric is
the minimal enlargement of Rn to a real linear associative algebra R0, n with identity
such that x2
jxj2 , for any x 2 Rn .
n
It thus follows that if fej gnj1 , is the standard basis
P of R , we must have ei ej ej ei

2ij . Every element a 2 R0, n is of the form a AN aA eA , N f1, . . . , ng, aA 2 R,
where e=0 e0 1, ef j g ej , and eA e1 . . . ek for A 1 , . . . , k with 1 <    < k .
The conjugation is defined by a : A aA eA , where
eA
1k eik . . . ei2 ei1 ,

if eA ei1 ei2 . . . eik :

399

Weighted Cauchy transforms in Clifford analysis

By means of the conjugation we endow R0, n with the natural Euclidean norm
jaj2 <aa. An algebric norm may be defined by taking jaj20 2n jaj2 .
We shall work in the Euclidean space Rn1 assumed to be embedded in the Clifford
algebra R0, n , by identifying x0 , x 2 Rn1 R  Rn with x0 x 2 R0, n . We consider
functions u defined in some subset of Rn1 and taking values in R0, n :
ux

uA xeA

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with R-valued coordinates uA x:

Properties such as continuity and differentiability which are ascribed to u have to
be possessed by all coordinates. In this way, we shall employ usual notation for the
corresponding function spaces.
In [9], and also [10], a theory of monogenic functions with values in Clifford algebras
is considered which generalized in a natural way the theory of analytic functions of one
complex variables to the n 1-dimensional Euclidean space. Monogenic functions
are null (sufficiently smooth) solutions of the generalized CauchyRiemann operator
in Rn1 :
@x :

n
X
i0

ei

@
@xi

It is a first-order elliptic operator whose fundamental solution is given by

ex

1
x
An1 jxjn1

where An1 is the area of the unit sphere in Rn1 . If  is open in Rn1 and
u 2 C1 , R0, n , then u is said to be a left (resp. right) monogenic function in  if
@x , u 0 (resp. u, @x 0) in . Notice that the fundamental solution e is both left
and right monogenic in Rn1 n f0g.
Other basic examples of monogenic functions are obtained by means of the
Cliffordian Cauchy transform. Assume that  is a bounded domain in Rn1 with a
sufficiently smooth boundary
: @. Then for each continuous function u in
, the
Cliffordian Cauchy transform C
u is formally defined by

C
ux :

ey
x
yuydHn y,

x 2 Rn1 n

where Hn denotes the n-dimensional Hausdorff measure (the definition of Hausdorff

measure can be found in e.g., [11,12]) and
(y) is the outward normal (unit) vector
at y. Clearly C
u is monogenic in Rn1 n
.
Besides the Cauchy transform we also need its singular version, the principal
value singular integral operator S
uz : lim!0 S
,  uz, where S
,  denotes the
truncated integral defined by

S
,  uz :

nfjy
zjg

ey
z
yuy
uzdHn y,

z 2
:

400

R. Abreu-Blaya et al.

Actually, the a priori smoothness assumption for
is not necessary. For instance there
is a very general version of the unit normal
(y) introduced by Federer [11], Chapter 3,
such that the Stokes theorem still holds for boundaries with Hn
< 1. It is exactly
this version of Stokes theorem of which we need to establish the basic formulae
in Clifford analysis such as Cauchys theorem and Cauchys integral formula, etc.
(see [3,4]).
Throughout the article we denote by
a compact topological surface which is the
boundary of a bounded simply connected domain  in Rn1 . We assume that surface

satisfies the above natural condition (geometrically speaking) Hn
< 1.

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3. !-regular surfaces and weighted Cauchy transform

Let X be a compact metric space and 0  s < 1. Following Mattila [12], for 0 <   1
and any function !: X 0, 1 set
Hs, ! X inf

ci diamEi s

where the infimum is taken over all finite or countable families fEi , ci g such that
0 < ci < 1, [1
i Ei X, diamEi   and
!

c i  Ei :

Obviously Hs, ! X is non-increasing in  and we can define

Hs! X lim Hs, ! X:
&0

When ! is Hs - measurable, then it is easy to verify (see [12], p. 118) that

Hs! X  ! dHs :
X

In fact, this holds as an equality as proved in [11, 2.10.24], i.e.,

Hs! X

! dHs :
X

We now present a definition of !-regular surfaces in Rn1 closely related to the

definition introduced by David in [8, p. 71].
Definition 3.1 For a (positive R-valued) function ! defined in
we shall call surface

a !-regular surface if there is a real constant C!  0 such that
Hn!
\ Bz, r  C! rn

401

Weighted Cauchy transforms in Clifford analysis

for all z 2
and 0 < r  diam
, where

Bz, r fy 2 Rn1 : jy
zj  rg:
Here and in the sequel, notation C! , C, c, etc. will be used for positive constants,
which may vary from one occurrence to the next.

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In what follows we content ourselves with the case when ! is a continuous function
on
.
If
is an AhlforsDavid regular (or simply regular) surface, i.e.,
C
1 rn  Hn
\ Bz, r  C rn
for all z 2
and 0 < r  diam
, then it is also !-regular for any ! not vanishing
identically in
. To prove this it is sufficient to choose C! maxz2
!zC.
On the other hand, in [13, section 2.2] the authors constructed an example of a
non-regular surface
0 @0 in R3 which is !-regular with weight function
wx jF0 xj, where the function F0 is continuous in 0 [
0 and monogenic in 0.
A careful reading of this construction shows that the class of such examples is in fact
substantially large enough. In what follows we only consider weight functions of type
jFj, where F is a continuous Clifford algebra valued function in
monogenically
extendable to .
To avoid the lost regularity of an jFj-regular surface the authors introduced in [13]
the weighted Cauchy transforms


CF
u x

ey
x
yFyuydHn y,

x2
=


S F
u z lim SF
,  uz,
!0

z2

where



SF
,  u z

ey
z
yFyuy
uzdHn y,

z 2
:

nBz, 

When
is a jFj-regular surface, then Theorem 1 in [13] implies the boundedness of

the operator S F
from the generalized Holder class into itself.
In Theorem 2 from [13], the authors give a sufficient (not a necessary) condition for
the existence of continuous limit values of the weighted Cauchy transform CF
on
jFj-regular surfaces.
The following is the main result (Theorem 3.2) of this article and its proof will be
presented in section 5. It gives a necessary and sufficient condition for the existence
of continuous limit values of the weighted Cauchy integral CF
on jFj-regular surfaces
and can be considered as a generalization of a previous result obtained by the two
first named authors for the case of AhlforsDavid regular surfaces, see [7].

402

R. Abreu-Blaya et al.

THEOREM 3.2 Let
be an n-rectifiable and jFj-regular surface. Let u be a given

R0, n -valued continuous function on
. Then the following two conditions are equivalent
(1) CF
u has continuous limit values CF
u in
;
(2) S F
,  u ! S F
u uniformly on
as  ! 0.
We recall that
is said to be n-rectifiable if it is the Lipschitz image of some
bounded subset of Rn .

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4. Auxiliary statements
The next lemma will be very useful in what follows and can be proven in a similar way
as Lemma 8.1 in [14].
LEMMA 4.1 Let  be a non-negative function which does not increase in 0, d ,
d diam
, and let x 2
. Then, for 1 , 2 2 0, d , 1 < 2 , the following formula holds

2

jy
zjjFyjdH y

d HnjFj
\ Bz, 

1

2 zn
1 z

where
 z
\ Bz,  and the integral on the right-hand side is taken as a Stieltjes
integral relative to the non-decreasing function
#Fz r HnjFj
\ Bz, r:
LEMMA 4.2

Let u 2 C
, R0, n and z 2
.

(i) For x 2  :  with jx
zj =2 we have







 F 
 C
u x
SF
,  u z
Fzuz


d
#Fz 
$u  F
c
$u  
d#z  $F  :
n1
dist x,
n
 
(ii) For x 2 
Rn1 n  [
with jx
zj =2 we have



 

 F 
 C
u x
SF
,  u z


d
#Fz 
$u  F
c
$



d#

:
u
z
n1
dist x,
n
 
To use a sharper estimate of the smoothness of the function f in C
, R0, n , we
consider the modulus of continuity of f on
, defined by:
$f  :  sup r
1 sup j f z1
f z2 j:
r

jz1
z2 jr

Weighted Cauchy transforms in Clifford analysis

403

Let x 2  with jx
zj =2. Then

Proof




F 
C
u x
SF
,  u z
Fzuz

ey
x
yFyuy
uzdHn y

 z

ey
x
ey
z
yFy

n
 z

uy
uzdHn y
Fx
Fzuz : I1 I2 I3 :

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For I1 we obtain

jFyjjuy
uzj
jFyj $u jy
zj
n
dH
y

c
dHn y
n
n
jy


xj
jy


xj

 z

 z

$u 
#Fz 
c
jFyjdHn y c
$u :
n
dist x,

 z
dist x,
n

jI1 j  c

We now proceed to estimate I2. It can be proven that the following inequality holds:
jey
x
ey
zj  c

jx
zj
,
jy
zjn1

y 2
n
 z:

Indeed
jey
x
ey
zj 

n
jx
zj X
1
:
j
An1 j1 jy
xj jy
zjn1
j

Now for y 2
n
 z we have that

  jy
zj  jy
xj jx
zj jy
xj =2
then jy
zj  2jy
xj. Hence
jey
x
ey
zj 

n
X
jx
zj
jx
zj
2j c
:
n1
An1 jy
zj
jy
zjn1
j1

The above inequality yields

jI2 j  c jx
zj

$u jy
zj
jFyjdHn y
n1
jy


zj

n
 z

and applying Lemma 4.1 we have

d
jI2 j  c 


$u  F
d#z :
 n1

404

R. Abreu-Blaya et al.

Finally for I3, it is easy to see that

jI3 j  c $F :
The estimates of jI1 j, jI2 j and jI3 j prove i. The proof of ii is similar due to



F 
C
u x
SF
,  u z I1 I2
g

for x 2 
.

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From now on, we assume that
is a n-rectifiable surface. Therefore, as at H -almost

all points z 2
the conventional tangent plane exists, we can consider a right circular
cone V z with vertex at z and such that its axis coincides with the normal vector to

at z and its angle  between the axis and the generator of the cone is less than =2.
For any 0 <  < =2 there is a sufficiently small positive number  such that
for  <  we have
V z \
 z fzg
When approaching x to z non-tangentially inside V z it is possible to find a constant
C(z) independent of x such that jx
zj  Cz distx,
. Furthermore, according to
Theorem 1 in [7], for Hn -almost every z in
there exists a constant CF(z) such that
#Fz r  CF z rn , for every r 2 0, diam
.
Combining the above remarks, it easily follows that the right-hand side of the
estimates in Lemma 4.2 tends to zero for Hn -almost every z 2
after replacing #Fz 
by  n and letting x tend to z non-tangentially. We have thus obtained the following
theorem.
THEOREM 4.3
(1) Let
be n-rectifiable and let u 2 C
, R0, n . If the weighted Cauchy transform
CF
ux has non-tangential limit values from  or 
Hn -almost everywhere
on
, then S F
uz exists for Hn -almost every z 2
, and the following
PlemeljSokhotski formulae hold:





CF
u z S F
u z Fzuz,






CF
u z S F
u z:

(2) Conversely, if S F
uz exists for Hn -almost every z 2
, then the weighted Cauchy
transform CF
ux has non-tangential limit values CF
u z Hn -almost everywhere
in
and the PlemeljSokhotski formulae (2) hold.

5. Proof of the main theorem

We are finally ready to prove the main result of this note.
Proof [Proof of the part (1) ) (2)] Assume that the weighted Cauchy transform
CF
ux has continuous limit values. Then from Theorem 4.3






CF
u z
CF
u z Fzuz,

for Hn -almost every z 2
:

Weighted Cauchy transforms in Clifford analysis

405

The continuity of CF
u z and Fzuz implies that the above equality holds
everywhere on
.
Therefore

ey
z
yFyuy
uzdHn y

n
 z

n
 z





ey
z
y CF
u y
CF
u zdHn y

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n
 z







ey
z
y CF
u y
CF
u z dHn y
ey
z
yFy
FzdHn yuz:

n
 z

By virtue of Lemma 2 in [7], the right-hand side of the above inequality converges
uniformly in
as  ! 0.
g
Proof [Proof of the part (2) ) (1)]

We shall prove that

F 
C
u z S F
uz Fzuz,



CF
u z S F
uz:

For the sake of brevity we restrict ourselves to the case CF
u z. Similarly, we can
consider the case CF
u
z.
Let z be a fixed point of
and let x 2  . There is a point zx 2
such that
jx
zx j  distx,
. Then




F 
 





 C u x
S F u z
Fzuz   CF u x
SF u zx
Fzx uzx 







, 







ey
zx
yFyuy
uzx dHn y


 zx

F 
 


F 
 S
u z
S
u zx  Fzuz
Fzx uzx :
From Lemma 4.2 and using the fact that
is a jF j-regular surface one can deduce


d





$u 

 F 
d

$

:
 C
u x
SF
,  u zx
Fzx uzx   c $u  
F
2

By making use of the last inequality as well as the assumption (2) we conclude
the proof.
g
Acknowledgements
The members of the Cuban Research Group in Clifford analysis are much indebted to
Richard Delanghe for his willingness to cooperate on the development of Mathematics
and promotion of Clifford analysis in Cuba.

406

R. Abreu-Blaya et al.

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