Degenerate Stability of the Caffarelli-Kohn-Nirenberg Inequality along the Felli-Schneider Curve

Abstract: We show that the Caffarelli-Kohn-Nirenberg (CKN) inequality holds with a remainder term that is quartic in the distance to the set of optimizers for the full parameter range of the Felli-Schneider (FS) curve. The fourth power is best possible. This is due to the presence of non-trivial zero modes of the Hessian of the deficit functional along the FS-curve. Following an iterated Bianchi-Egnell strategy, the heart of our proof is verifying a `secondary non-degeneracy condition'. Our result completes the stability analysis for the CKN-inequality to leading order started by Wei and Wu. Moreover, it is the first instance of degenerate stability for non-constant optimizers and for a non-compact domain.