Best constants for uncentered maximal functions

Abstract

We precisely evaluate the operator norm of the uncentered Hardy-Littlewood maximal function on $L^p(\Bbb R^1)$. We also compute the operator norm of the uncentered Hardy-Littlewood maximal function over rectangles on $L^p(\Bbb R^n)$, and we show that the operator norm of the uncentered Hardy-Littlewood maximal function over balls on $L^p(\Bbb R^n)$ grows exponentially with the dimension as $n \to \infty$.