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Proof of the Holevo--Utkin conjecture on sharp $\ell_p$ norms for zero-sum vectors

Classical Analysis and ODEs 2026-05-22 v2 Mathematical Physics Functional Analysis math.MP

Abstract

Let d3d\ge 3 and p>0p>0. Let xp\|x\|_p denote the p\ell_p (quasi-)norm of a dd-dimensional vector xx. Holevo and Utkin \cite{HU26} conjectured that for 0<p10<p\le 1, min{xpx2:0xRd, i=1dxi=0}=21/p1/2; \min \left\{\frac{\|x\|_p}{\|x\|_2}:\vec{0}\neq x\in\mathbb R^d,\ \sum_{i=1}^d x_i=0\right\} =2^{1/p-1/2}; for 1<p<21<p<2, min{xpx2:0xRd, i=1dxi=0}=min{21/p1/2,((d1)p/2+(d1)1p/2dp/2)1/p}; \min \left\{\frac{\|x\|_p}{\|x\|_2}:\vec{0}\neq x\in\mathbb R^d,\ \sum_{i=1}^d x_i=0\right\} = \min\left\{2^{1/p-1/2},\left(\frac{(d-1)^{p/2}+(d-1)^{1-p/2}}{d^{p/2}}\right)^{1/p}\right\}; and for 2<q<2<q<\infty max{xqx2:0xRd, i=1dxi=0}=max{21/q1/2,((d1)q/2+(d1)1q/2dq/2)1/q}. \max\left\{\frac{\|x\|_q}{\|x\|_2}:\vec{0}\neq x\in\mathbb R^d,\ \sum_{i=1}^d x_i=0\right\} = \max\left\{2^{1/q-1/2},\left(\frac{(d-1)^{q/2}+(d-1)^{1-q/2}}{d^{q/2}}\right)^{1/q}\right\}. They proved the d=3d=3 case in \cite{HU26}. In this paper, we confirm the conjecture of the remaining cases d4d\ge 4.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2605.05243,
  title  = {Proof of the Holevo--Utkin conjecture on sharp $\ell_p$ norms for zero-sum vectors},
  author = {Haonan Zhang},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2605.05243},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

23 pages. Some typos corrected. More results and references added