Conventions

The brief statement of Hölder's inequality uses some conventions.

• In the definition of Hölder conjugates, 1/∞ means zero.
• If p, q ∈ [1, ∞), then ‖f ‖_p and ‖g‖_q stand for the (possibly infinite) expressions

${\displaystyle {\begin{aligned}&\left(\int _{S}|f|^{p}\,\mathrm {d} \mu \right)^{\frac {1}{p}}\\&\left(\int _{S}|g|^{q}\,\mathrm {d} \mu \right)^{\frac {1}{q}}\end{aligned}}}$

• If p = ∞, then ‖f ‖_∞ stands for the essential supremum of |f |, similarly for ‖g‖_∞.
• The notation ‖f ‖_p with 1 ≤ p ≤ ∞ is a slight abuse, because in general it is only a norm of f if ‖f ‖_p is finite and f is considered as equivalence class of μ-almost everywhere equal functions. If f ∈ L^p(μ) and g ∈ L^q(μ), then the notation is adequate.
• On the right-hand side of Hölder's inequality, 0 × ∞ as well as ∞ × 0 means 0. Multiplying a > 0 with ∞ gives ∞.

Estimates for integrable products

As above, let f and g denote measurable real- or complex-valued functions defined on S. If ‖fg‖₁ is finite, then the pointwise products of f with g and its complex conjugate function are μ-integrable, the estimate

${\displaystyle {\biggl |}\int _{S}f{\bar {g}}\,\mathrm {d} \mu {\biggr |}\leq \int _{S}|fg|\,\mathrm {d} \mu =\|fg\|_{1}}$

and the similar one for fg hold, and Hölder's inequality can be applied to the right-hand side. In particular, if f and g are in the Hilbert space L²(μ), then Hölder's inequality for p = q = 2 implies

${\displaystyle |\langle f,g\rangle |\leq \|f\|_{2}\|g\|_{2},}$

where the angle brackets refer to the inner product of L²(μ). This is also called Cauchy–Schwarz inequality, but requires for its statement that ‖f ‖₂ and ‖g‖₂ are finite to make sure that the inner product of f and g is well defined. We may recover the original inequality (for the case p = 2) by using the functions |f | and |g| in place of f and g.

Generalization for probability measures

If (S, Σ, μ) is a probability space, then p, q ∈ [1, ∞] just need to satisfy 1/p + 1/q ≤ 1, rather than being Hölder conjugates. A combination of Hölder's inequality and Jensen's inequality implies that

${\displaystyle \|fg\|_{1}\leq \|f\|_{p}\|g\|_{q}}$

for all measurable real- or complex-valued functions f and g on S.

Counting measure

For the n-dimensional Euclidean space, when the set S is {1, ..., n} with the counting measure, we have

${\displaystyle \sum _{k=1}^{n}|x_{k}\,y_{k}|\leq {\biggl (}\sum _{k=1}^{n}|x_{k}|^{p}{\biggr )}^{\frac {1}{p}}{\biggl (}\sum _{k=1}^{n}|y_{k}|^{q}{\biggr )}^{\frac {1}{q}}{\text{ for all }}(x_{1},\ldots ,x_{n}),(y_{1},\ldots ,y_{n})\in \mathbb {R} ^{n}{\text{ or }}\mathbb {C} ^{n}.}$

Often the following practical form of this is used, for any ${\displaystyle (r,s)\in \mathbb {R} _{+}}$:

${\displaystyle {\biggl (}\sum _{k=1}^{n}|x_{k}|^{r}\,|y_{k}|^{s}{\biggr )}^{r+s}\leq {\biggl (}\sum _{k=1}^{n}|x_{k}|^{r+s}{\biggr )}^{r}{\biggl (}\sum _{k=1}^{n}|y_{k}|^{r+s}{\biggr )}^{s}.}$

For more than two sums, the following generalisation (Chen (2015)) holds, with real positive exponents ${\displaystyle \lambda _{i}}$ and ${\displaystyle \lambda _{a}+\lambda _{b}+\cdots +\lambda _{z}=1}$:

${\displaystyle \sum _{k=1}^{n}|a_{k}|^{\lambda _{a}}\,|b_{k}|^{\lambda _{b}}\cdots |z_{k}|^{\lambda _{z}}\leq {\biggl (}\sum _{k=1}^{n}|a_{k}|{\biggr )}^{\lambda _{a}}{\biggl (}\sum _{k=1}^{n}|b_{k}|{\biggr )}^{\lambda _{b}}\cdots {\biggl (}\sum _{k=1}^{n}|z_{k}|{\biggr )}^{\lambda _{z}}.}$

Equality holds iff ${\displaystyle |a_{1}|:|a_{2}|:\cdots$ :|a_{n}|=|b_{1}|:|b_{2}|:\cdots :|b_{n}|=\cdots =|z_{1}|:|z_{2}|:\cdots :|z_{n}|} .

If S = N with the counting measure, then we get Hölder's inequality for sequence spaces:

${\displaystyle \sum _{k=1}^{\infty }|x_{k}\,y_{k}|\leq {\biggl (}\sum _{k=1}^{\infty }|x_{k}|^{p}{\biggr )}^{\frac {1}{p}}\left(\sum _{k=1}^{\infty }|y_{k}|^{q}\right)^{\frac {1}{q}}{\text{ for all }}(x_{k})_{k\in \mathbb {N} },(y_{k})_{k\in \mathbb {N} }\in \mathbb {R} ^{\mathbb {N} }{\text{ or }}\mathbb {C} ^{\mathbb {N} }.}$

Lebesgue measure

If S is a measurable subset of Rⁿ with the Lebesgue measure, and f and g are measurable real- or complex-valued functions on S, then Hölder inequality is

${\displaystyle \int _{S}{\bigl |}f(x)g(x){\bigr |}\,\mathrm {d} x\leq {\biggl (}\int _{S}|f(x)|^{p}\,\mathrm {d} x{\biggr )}^{\frac {1}{p}}{\biggl (}\int _{S}|g(x)|^{q}\,\mathrm {d} x{\biggr )}^{\frac {1}{q}}.}$

Probability measure

For the probability space ${\displaystyle (\Omega ,{\mathcal {F}},\mathbb {P} ),}$ let ${\displaystyle \mathbb {E} }$ denote the expectation operator. For real- or complex-valued random variables ${\displaystyle X}$ and ${\displaystyle Y}$ on ${\displaystyle \Omega ,}$ Hölder's inequality reads

${\displaystyle \mathbb {E} [|XY|]\leqslant \left(\mathbb {E} {\bigl [}|X|^{p}{\bigr ]}\right)^{\frac {1}{p}}\left(\mathbb {E} {\bigl [}|Y|^{q}{\bigr ]}\right)^{\frac {1}{q}}.}$

Let ${\displaystyle 1<r<s<\infty }$ and define ${\displaystyle p={\tfrac {s}{r}}.}$ Then ${\displaystyle q={\tfrac {p}{p-1}}}$ is the Hölder conjugate of ${\displaystyle p.}$ Applying Hölder's inequality to the random variables ${\displaystyle |X|^{r}}$ and ${\displaystyle 1_{\Omega }}$ we obtain

${\displaystyle \mathbb {E} {\bigl [}|X|^{r}{\bigr ]}\leqslant \left(\mathbb {E} {\bigl [}|X|^{s}{\bigr ]}\right)^{\frac {r}{s}}.}$

In particular, if the s^th absolute moment is finite, then the r ^th absolute moment is finite, too. (This also follows from Jensen's inequality.)

Product measure

For two σ-finite measure spaces (S₁, Σ₁, μ₁) and (S₂, Σ₂, μ₂) define the product measure space by

${\displaystyle S=S_{1}\times S_{2},\quad \Sigma =\Sigma _{1}\otimes \Sigma _{2},\quad \mu =\mu _{1}\otimes \mu _{2},}$

where S is the Cartesian product of S₁ and S₂, the σ-algebra Σ arises as product σ-algebra of Σ₁ and Σ₂, and μ denotes the product measure of μ₁ and μ₂. Then Tonelli's theorem allows us to rewrite Hölder's inequality using iterated integrals: If f and g are Σ-measurable real- or complex-valued functions on the Cartesian product S, then

${\displaystyle \int _{S_{1}}\int _{S_{2}}|f(x,y)\,g(x,y)|\,\mu _{2}(\mathrm {d} y)\,\mu _{1}(\mathrm {d} x)\leq \left(\int _{S_{1}}\int _{S_{2}}|f(x,y)|^{p}\,\mu _{2}(\mathrm {d} y)\,\mu _{1}(\mathrm {d} x)\right)^{\frac {1}{p}}\left(\int _{S_{1}}\int _{S_{2}}|g(x,y)|^{q}\,\mu _{2}(\mathrm {d} y)\,\mu _{1}(\mathrm {d} x)\right)^{\frac {1}{q}}.}$

This can be generalized to more than two σ-finite measure spaces.

Vector-valued functions

Let (S, Σ, μ) denote a σ-finite measure space and suppose that f = (f₁, ..., f_n) and g = (g₁, ..., g_n) are Σ-measurable functions on S, taking values in the n-dimensional real- or complex Euclidean space. By taking the product with the counting measure on {1, ..., n}, we can rewrite the above product measure version of Hölder's inequality in the form

${\displaystyle \int _{S}\sum _{k=1}^{n}|f_{k}(x)\,g_{k}(x)|\,\mu (\mathrm {d} x)\leq \left(\int _{S}\sum _{k=1}^{n}|f_{k}(x)|^{p}\,\mu (\mathrm {d} x)\right)^{\frac {1}{p}}\left(\int _{S}\sum _{k=1}^{n}|g_{k}(x)|^{q}\,\mu (\mathrm {d} x)\right)^{\frac {1}{q}}.}$

If the two integrals on the right-hand side are finite, then equality holds if and only if there exist real numbers α, β ≥ 0, not both of them zero, such that

${\displaystyle \alpha \left(|f_{1}(x)|^{p},\ldots ,|f_{n}(x)|^{p}\right)=\beta \left(|g_{1}(x)|^{q},\ldots ,|g_{n}(x)|^{q}\right),}$

for μ-almost all x in S.

This finite-dimensional version generalizes to functions f and g taking values in a normed space which could be for example a sequence space or an inner product space.

Statement

Assume that 1 ≤ p < ∞ and let q denote the Hölder conjugate. Then for every f ∈ L^p(μ),

${\displaystyle \|f\|_{p}=\max \left\{\left|\int _{S}fg\,\mathrm {d} \mu \right|:g\in L^{q}(\mu ),\|g\|_{q}\leq 1\right\},}$

where max indicates that there actually is a g maximizing the right-hand side. When p = ∞ and if each set A in the σ-field Σ with μ(A) = ∞ contains a subset B ∈ Σ with 0 < μ(B) < ∞ (which is true in particular when μ is σ-finite), then

${\displaystyle \|f\|_{\infty }=\sup \left\{\left|\int _{S}fg\,\mathrm {d} \mu \right|:g\in L^{1}(\mu ),\|g\|_{1}\leq 1\right\}.}$

Proof of the extremal equality:

Remarks and examples

• The equality for ${\displaystyle p=\infty }$ fails whenever there exists a set ${\displaystyle A}$ of infinite measure in the ${\displaystyle \sigma }$-field ${\displaystyle \Sigma }$ with that has no subset ${\displaystyle B\in \Sigma }$ that satisfies: ${\displaystyle 0<\mu (B)<\infty .}$ (the simplest example is the ${\displaystyle \sigma }$-field ${\displaystyle \Sigma }$ containing just the empty set and ${\displaystyle S,}$ and the measure ${\displaystyle \mu }$ with ${\displaystyle \mu (S)=\infty .}$) Then the indicator function ${\displaystyle 1_{A}}$ satisfies ${\displaystyle \|1_{A}\|_{\infty }=1,}$ but every ${\displaystyle g\in L^{1}(\mu )}$ has to be ${\displaystyle \mu }$-almost everywhere constant on ${\displaystyle A,}$ because it is ${\displaystyle \Sigma }$-measurable, and this constant has to be zero, because ${\displaystyle g}$ is ${\displaystyle \mu }$-integrable. Therefore, the above supremum for the indicator function ${\displaystyle 1_{A}}$ is zero and the extremal equality fails.
• For ${\displaystyle p=\infty ,}$ the supremum is in general not attained. As an example, let ${\displaystyle S=\mathbb {N} ,\Sigma ={\mathcal {P}}(\mathbb {N} )}$ and ${\displaystyle \mu }$ the counting measure. Define:

${\displaystyle {\begin{cases}f:\mathbb {N} \to \mathbb {R} \\f(n)={\frac {n-1}{n}}\end{cases}}}$

Then ${\displaystyle \|f\|_{\infty }=1.}$ For ${\displaystyle g\in L^{1}(\mu ,\mathbb {N} )}$ with ${\displaystyle 0<\|g\|_{1}\leqslant 1,}$ let ${\displaystyle m}$ denote the smallest natural number with ${\displaystyle g(m)\neq 0.}$ Then

${\displaystyle \left|\int _{S}fg\,\mathrm {d} \mu \right|\leqslant {\frac {m-1}{m}}|g(m)|+\sum _{n=m+1}^{\infty }|g(n)|=\|g\|_{1}-{\frac {|g(m)|}{m}}<1.}$

Applications

• The extremal equality is one of the ways for proving the triangle inequality ‖f₁ + f₂‖_p ≤ ‖f₁‖_p + ‖f₂‖_p for all f₁ and f₂ in L^p(μ), see Minkowski inequality.
• Hölder's inequality implies that every f ∈ L^p(μ) defines a bounded (or continuous) linear functional κ_f on L^q(μ) by the formula

${\displaystyle \kappa _{f}(g)=\int _{S}fg\,\mathrm {d} \mu ,\qquad g\in L^{q}(\mu ).}$

The extremal equality (when true) shows that the norm of this functional κ_f as element of the continuous dual space L^q(μ)^* coincides with the norm of f in L^p(μ) (see also the L^p-space article).

Statement

Assume that r ∈ (0, ∞] and p₁, ..., p_n ∈ (0, ∞] such that

${\displaystyle \sum _{k=1}^{n}{\frac {1}{p_{k}}}={\frac {1}{r}}}$

where 1/∞ is interpreted as 0 in this equation. Then for all measurable real or complex-valued functions f₁, ..., f_n defined on S,

${\displaystyle \left\|\prod _{k=1}^{n}f_{k}\right\|_{r}\leq \prod _{k=1}^{n}\left\|f_{k}\right\|_{p_{k}}}$

where we interpret any product with a factor of ∞ as ∞ if all factors are positive, but the product is 0 if any factor is 0.

In particular, if ${\displaystyle f_{k}\in L^{p_{k}}(\mu )}$ for all ${\displaystyle k\in \{1,\ldots ,n\}}$ then ${\displaystyle \prod _{k=1}^{n}f_{k}\in L^{r}(\mu ).}$

Note: For ${\displaystyle r\in (0,1),}$ contrary to the notation, ‖.‖_r is in general not a norm because it doesn't satisfy the triangle inequality.

Proof of the generalization:

Interpolation

Let p₁, ..., p_n ∈ (0, ∞] and let θ₁, ..., θ_n ∈ (0, 1) denote weights with θ₁ + ... + θ_n = 1. Define ${\displaystyle p}$ as the weighted harmonic mean, that is,

${\displaystyle {\frac {1}{p}}=\sum _{k=1}^{n}{\frac {\theta _{k}}{p_{k}}}.}$

Given measurable real- or complex-valued functions ${\displaystyle f_{k}}$ on S, then the above generalization of Hölder's inequality gives

${\displaystyle \left\||f_{1}|^{\theta _{1}}\cdots |f_{n}|^{\theta _{n}}\right\|_{p}\leq \left\||f_{1}|^{\theta _{1}}\right\|_{\frac {p_{1}}{\theta _{1}}}\cdots \left\||f_{n}|^{\theta _{n}}\right\|_{\frac {p_{n}}{\theta _{n}}}=\|f_{1}\|_{p_{1}}^{\theta _{1}}\cdots \|f_{n}\|_{p_{n}}^{\theta _{n}}.}$

In particular, taking ${\displaystyle f_{1}=\cdots =f_{n}=:f}$ gives

${\displaystyle \|f\|_{p}\leqslant \prod _{k=1}^{n}\|f\|_{p_{k}}^{\theta _{k}}.}$

Specifying further θ₁ = θ and θ₂ = 1-θ, in the case ${\displaystyle n=2,}$ we obtain the interpolation result

Littlewood's inequality — For ${\displaystyle \theta \in (0,1)}$ and ${\displaystyle {\frac {1}{p_{\theta }}}={\frac {\theta }{p_{1}}}+{\frac {1-\theta }{p_{0}}}}$,

$${\displaystyle \|f\|_{p_{\theta }}\leqslant \|f\|_{p_{1}}^{\theta }\cdot \|f\|_{p_{0}}^{1-\theta },}$$

An application of Hölder gives

Lyapunov's inequality — If ${\displaystyle p=(1-\theta )p_{0}+\theta p_{1},\qquad \theta \in (0,1),}$ then

$${\displaystyle \left\||f_{0}|^{\frac {p_{0}(1-\theta )}{p}}\cdot |f_{1}|^{\frac {p_{1}\theta }{p}}\right\|_{p}^{p}\leq \|f_{0}\|_{p_{0}}^{p_{0}(1-\theta )}\|f_{1}\|_{p_{1}}^{p_{1}\theta }}$$

and in particular

$${\displaystyle \|f\|_{p}^{p}\leqslant \|f\|_{p_{0}}^{p_{0}(1-\theta )}\cdot \|f\|_{p_{1}}^{p_{1}\theta }.}$$

Both Littlewood and Lyapunov imply that if ${\displaystyle f\in L^{p_{0}}\cap L^{p_{1}}}$ then ${\displaystyle f\in L^{p}}$ for all ${\displaystyle p_{0}<p<p_{1}.}$^[4]

Two functions

Assume that p ∈ (1, ∞) and that the measure space (S, Σ, μ) satisfies μ(S) > 0. Then for all measurable real- or complex-valued functions f and g on S such that g(s) ≠ 0 for μ-almost all s ∈ S,

${\displaystyle \|fg\|_{1}\geqslant \|f\|_{\frac {1}{p}}\,\|g\|_{\frac {-1}{p-1}}.}$

If

${\displaystyle \|fg\|_{1}<\infty \quad {\text{and}}\quad \|g\|_{\frac {-1}{p-1}}>0,}$

then the reverse Hölder inequality is an equality if and only if

${\displaystyle \exists \alpha \geqslant 0\quad |f|=\alpha |g|^{\frac {-p}{p-1}}\qquad \mu {\text{-almost everywhere}}.}$

Note: The expressions:

${\displaystyle \|f\|_{\frac {1}{p}}}$ and ${\displaystyle \|g\|_{\frac {-1}{p-1}},}$

are not norms, they are just compact notations for

${\displaystyle \left(\int _{S}|f|^{\frac {1}{p}}\,\mathrm {d} \mu \right)^{p}\quad {\text{and}}\quad \left(\int _{S}|g|^{\frac {-1}{p-1}}\,\mathrm {d} \mu \right)^{-(p-1)}.}$

Multiple functions

The Reverse Hölder inequality (above) can be generalized to the case of multiple functions if all but one conjugate is negative. That is,

Let ${\displaystyle p_{1},...,p_{m-1}<0}$ and ${\displaystyle p_{m}\in \mathbb {R} }$ be such that ${\displaystyle \sum _{k=1}^{m}{\frac {1}{p_{k}}}=1}$ (hence ${\displaystyle 0<p_{m}<1}$). Let ${\displaystyle f_{k}}$ be measurable functions for ${\displaystyle k=1,...,m}$. Then

${\displaystyle \left\|\prod _{k=1}^{n}f_{k}\right\|_{1}\geq \prod _{k=1}^{n}\left\|f_{k}\right\|_{p_{k}}.}$

This follows from the symmetric form of the Hölder inequality (see below).