Smoothing estimates for the kinetic transport equation at the critical regularity

Abstract

We prove smoothing estimates for velocity averages of the kinetic transport equation in hyperbolic Sobolev spaces at the critical regularity, leading to a complete characterisation of the allowable regularity exponents. Such estimates will be deduced from some mixed-norm estimates for the cone multiplier operator at a certain critical index. Our argument is not particular to the geometry of the cone and we illustrate this by establishing analogous estimates for the paraboloid.