Hanner's Inequality For Positive Semidefinite Matrices

Victoria M. Chayes

Published 2021-10-15, updated 2022-05-18Version 3

We prove an analogous Hanner's Inequality of $L^p$ spaces for positive semidefinite matrices. Let $||X||_p=\text{Tr}[(X^\ast X)^{p/2}]^{1/p}$ denote the $p$-Schatten norm of a matrix $X\in M_{n\times n}(\mathbb{C})$. We show that the inequality $||X+Y||_p^p+||X-Y||_p^p\geq (||X||_p+||Y||_p)^p+(|||X||_p-||Y||_p|)^p$ holds for $1\leq p\leq 2$ and reverses for $p\geq 2$ when $X,Y\in M_{n\times n}(\mathbb{C})^+$. This was previously known in the $1<p\leq 4/3$, $p=2$, and $p\geq 4$ cases, or with additional special assumptions. We outline these previous methods, and comment on their failure to extend to the general case. We further show that there is equality if and only if $Y=cX$, which is analogous to the equality case in $L^p$. With the general inequality, it is confirmed that the unit ball in $C^{p}_+$ has the same moduli of smoothness and convexity as the unit ball in $L^p$.