We continue the study of the boundedness of the operator

on the set of decreasing functions in Lp(w). This operator was first introduced by Braverman and Lai and also studied by Andersen, and although the weighted weak-type estimate was completely solved, the characterization of the weights w such that is bounded is still open for the case in which p > 1. The solution of this problem will have applications in the study of the boundedness on weighted Lorentz spaces of important operators in harmonic analysis.

In this paper, we study the K-envelopes of the real interpolation methods with function space parameters in the sense of Brudnyi and Kruglyak [Y. A. Brudnyi and N. Ja. Kruglyak, Interpolation functors and interpolation spaces (North-Holland, Amsterdam, Netherlands, 1991)]. We estimate the upper bounds of the K-envelopes and the interpolation norms of bounded operators for the KΦ-methods in terms of the fundamental function of the rearrangement invariant space related to the function space parameter Φ. The results concerning the quasi-power parameters and the growth/continuity envelopes in function spaces are obtained.

We work with interpolation methods for $N$-tuples of Banach spaces associated with polygons. We compare necessary conditions for interpolating closed operator ideals with conditions required to interpolate compactness. We also establish a formula for the measure of non-compactness of interpolated operators.

Theorems 1 and 2 are known results concerning Lp–Lq estimates for certain operators wherein the point (1/p, 1/q) lies on the line of duality 1/p + 1/q = 1. In Theorems 1′ and 2′ we show that with mild additional hypotheses it is possible to prove Lp-Lq estimates for indices (1/p, 1/q) off the line of duality. Applications to Bochner-Riesz means of negative order and uniform Sobolev inequalities are given.