A Hölder-type inequality on a regular rooted tree

Abstract

We establish an inequality which involves a non-negative function defined on the vertices of a finite m-ary regular rooted tree. The inequality may be thought of as relating an interaction energy defined on the free vertices of the tree summed over automorphisms of the tree, to a product of sums of powers of the function over vertices at certain levels of the tree. Conjugate powers arise naturally in the inequality, indeed, Hölder's inequality is a key tool in the proof which uses induction on subgroups of the automorphism group of the tree.