On the sharp constant in the Bianchi-Egnell stability inequality

This note is concerned with the Bianchi-Egnell inequality, which quantifies the stability of the Sobolev inequality, and its generalization to fractional exponents $s \in (0, \frac{d}{2})$. We prove that in dimension $d \geq 2$ the best constant $$c_{BE}(s) = \inf_{f \in \dot{H}^s(\mathbb R^d) \setminus \mathcal M} \frac{\|(-\Delta)^{s/2} f\|_{L^2(\mathbb R^d)}^2 - S_{d,s} \|f\|_{L^{2^*}(\mathbb R^d)}^2}{\text{dist}_{\dot{H}^s(\mathbb R^d)}(f, \mathcal M)^2}$$ is strictly smaller than the spectral gap constant $\frac{4s}{d+2s+2}$ associated to sequences which converge to the manifold $\mathcal M$ of Sobolev optimizers. In particular, $c_{BE}(s)$ cannot be asymptotically attained by such sequences. Our proof relies on a precise expansion of the Bianchi-Egnell quotient along a well-chosen sequence of test functions converging to $\mathcal M$.