The sharp constant in the Chang--Marshall inequality

Abstract

We prove that the optimal constant in the Chang--Marshall inequality is $e$, as conjectured by Andreev and Matheson. More precisely, if $f$ is analytic in the unit disk, vanishes to order $m\geq1$ at the origin, and has normalized Dirichlet integral $d\leq1$, then the boundary mean of $e^{|f|^2}$ is at most $e^{d/m}$. Equality holds precisely for monomials. The proof uses an auxiliary closed planar curve and the isoperimetric inequality to establish monotonicity of the exponential functional along normalized radial dilations.