Density of smooth functions in Musielak-Orlicz-Sobolev spaces $W^{k,\Phi}(\Omega)$

Abstract

We consider here Musielak-Orlicz Sobolev (MOS) spaces $W^{k,\Phi}(\Omega)$, where $\Omega$ is an open subset of $\mathbb{R}^d$, $k\in\mathbb{N}$ and $\Phi$ is a Musielak-Orlicz function. The main outcomes consist of the results on density of the space of compactly supported smooth functions $C_C^\infty(\Omega)$ in $W^{k,\Phi}(\Omega)$. One section is devoted to compare the various conditions on $\Phi$ appearing in the literature in the context of maximal operator and density theorems in MOS spaces. The assumptions on $\Phi$ we apply here are substantially weaker than in the earlier papers on the topics of approximation by smooth functions \cite{Ahmida, Has1, Hasbook}. One of the reasons is that in the process of proving density theorems we do not use the fact that the Hardy-Littlewood maximal operator on Musielak-Orlicz space $L^\Phi(\Omega)$ is bounded, a standard tool employed in density results for different types of Sobolev spaces. We show in particular that under some regularity assumptions on $\Phi$, (A1) and $\Delta_2$ that are not sufficient for the maximal operator to be bounded, the space of $C_C^\infty(\mathbb{R}^d)$ is dense in $W^{k,\Phi}(\Omega)$. In the case of variable exponent Sobolev space $W^{k,p(\cdot)}(\mathbb{R}^d)$, we obtain the similar density result under assumption that $\Phi(x,t) = t^{p(x)}$, $p(x)\ge 1$, $t\ge 0$, $x\in \mathbb{R}^d$, satisfies the log-H\"older condition and the exponent function $p$ is essentially bounded.