A Counterexample to the Tang Zhang Schatten Norm Conjecture and Sharp Positive Results

We give a short linear-algebraic proof of the inequality $\|x\|_1\,\|x\|_\infty \le \frac{1+\sqrt{n}}{2}\,\|x\|_2^2,$ valid for every $x\in\mathbb{R}^n$. This inequality relates three fundamental norms on finite-dimensional spaces and has applications in optimization and numerical analysis. Our proof exploits the determinantal structure of a parametrized family of quadratic forms, and we show the constant $(1+\sqrt{n})/2$ is optimal. The inequality is a special case of Buzano's inequality, and the same method also proves Buzano's inequality for real vectors.

Let $\varepsilon_1,\ldots,\varepsilon_n$ be independent Rademacher signs and let $a=(a_1,\ldots,a_n)\in\R^n$ satisfy the normalization below. For the normalized Rademacher sum, we determine how its higher moments depend on the fourth-order mass. Combining a sharp fixed-q moment envelope with a separate argument below the convexity threshold gives the Gaussian stability inequality for the full range $p\geq4$ of this linear-in-q bound. The same fourth-order framework determines the sharp finite dimensional $L_p/L_4$ Khintchine constant for $p\geq5$, with the flat coefficient vector as the extremizer. These results settle the conjectures of Jakimiuk and of Barański, Murawski, Nayar, and Oleszkiewicz stated below. We also prove Jakimiuk's conjectured quadratic stability estimate at $p=3$. The resulting bounds retain information about sparsity and effective dimension, with applications to Rademacher random projections and randomly signed errors; those applications are not developed further here. Their Laplace-transform form also gives coefficient-sensitive tail bounds. The proofs are discovered with substantial assistance from ChatGPT 5.6 Sol.

Carbery proposed the following sharpened form of triangle inequality for many functions: for any $p\ge 2$ and any finite sequence $(f_j)_j\subset L^p$ we have $$\Big\|\sum_j f_j\Big\|_p \ \le\ \left(\sup_{j} \sum_{k} α_{jk}^{\,c}\right)^{1/p'} \Big(\sum_j \|f_j\|_p^p\Big)^{1/p},$$ where $c=2$, $1/p+1/p'=1$, and $α_{jk}=\sqrt{\frac{\|f_{j}f_{k}\|_{p/2}}{\|f_{j}\|_{p}\|f_{k}\|_{p}}}$. In the first part of this paper we construct a counterexample showing that this inequality fails for every $p>2$. We then prove that if an estimate of the above form holds, the exponent must satisfy $c\le p'$. Finally, at the critical exponent $c=p'$, we establish the inequality for all integer values $p\ge 2$. In the second part of the paper we obtain a sharp three-function bound $$\Big\|\sum_{j=1}^{3} f_j\Big\|_p \ \le\ \left(1+2Γ^{c(p)}\right)^{1/p'} \Big(\sum_{j=1}^{3} \|f_j\|_p^p\Big)^{1/p},$$ where $p \geq 3$, $c(p) = \frac{2\ln(2)}{(p-2)\ln(3)+2\ln(2)}$ and $Γ=Γ(f_1,f_2,f_3)\in[0,1]$ quantifies the degree of orthogonality among $f_1,f_2,f_3$. The exponent $c(p)$ is optimal, and improves upon the power $r(p) = \frac{6}{5p-4}$ obtained previously by Carlen, Frank, and Lieb. Some intermediate lemmas and inequalities appearing in this work were explored with the assistance of the large language model Grok.