Continuity in the Alexiewicz norm

Abstract

If $f$ is a Henstock-Kurzweil integrable function on the real line, the Alexiewicz norm of $f$ is $\Vert f\Vert =\sup _I|\int _I f|$ where the supremum is taken over all intervals $I\subset {\mathbb{R}}$. Define the translation $\tau _x$ by $\tau _xf(y)=f(y-x)$. Then $\Vert \tau _xf-f\Vert $ tends to $0$ as $x$ tends to $0$, i.e., $f$ is continuous in the Alexiewicz norm. For particular functions, $\Vert \tau _xf-f\Vert $ can tend to 0 arbitrarily slowly. In general, $\Vert \tau _xf-f\Vert \ge \mathop {\text{osc}}f|x|$ as $x\rightarrow 0$, where $ \mathop {\text{osc}}f$ is the oscillation of $f$. It is shown that if $F$ is a primitive of $f$ then $\Vert \tau _xF-F\Vert \le \Vert f\Vert |x|$. An example shows that the function $y\mapsto \tau _xF(y)-F(y)$ need not be in $L^1$. However, if $f\in L^1$ then $\Vert \tau _xF-F\Vert _1\le \Vert f\Vert _1|x|$. For a positive weight function $w$ on the real line, necessary and sufficient conditions on $w$ are given so that $\Vert (\tau _xf-f)w\Vert \rightarrow 0$ as $x\rightarrow 0$ whenever $fw$ is Henstock-Kurzweil integrable. Applications are made to the Poisson integral on the disc and half-plane. All of the results also hold with the distributional Denjoy integral, which arises from the completion of the space of Henstock-Kurzweil integrable functions as a subspace of Schwartz distributions.