On the numerical radius of operators in Lebesgue spaces

Abstract: We show that the absolute numerical index of the space $L_p(\mu)$ is $p^{-1/p} q^{-1/q}$ (where $1/p+1/q=1$). In other words, we prove that $$ \sup{\int |x|^{p-1}|Tx|\, d\mu \, : \ x\in L_p(\mu),\,|x|_p=1} \,\geq \,p^{-\frac{1}{p}} q^{-\frac{1}{q}}\,|T| $$ for every $T\in \mathcal{L}(L_p(\mu))$ and that this inequality is the best possible when the dimension of $L_p(\mu)$ is greater than one. We also give lower bounds for the best constant of equivalence between the numerical radius and the operator norm in $L_p(\mu)$ for atomless $\mu$ when restricting to rank-one operators or narrow operators.