Let $\ell \in \mathbb{N}$ and $p\in (1,\infty ]$. In this article, the authors establish several equivalent characterizations of Sobolev spaces $W^{2\ell +2,p}(\mathbb{R}^{n})$ in terms of derivatives of ball averages. The novelty in the results of this article is that these equivalent characterizations reveal some new connections between the smoothness indices of Sobolev spaces and the derivatives on the radius of ball averages and also that, to obtain the corresponding results for higher order Sobolev spaces, the authors first establish the combinatorial equality: for any $\ell \in \mathbb{N}$ and $k\in \{0,\ldots ,\ell -1\}$, $\sum _{j=0}^{2\ell }(-1)^{j}\binom{2\ell }{j}|\ell -j|^{2k}=0$.

By invoking some new ideas, we characterize Sobolev spaces Wα,p(ℝn) with the smoothness order α ∊ (0, 2] and p ∊ (max{1, 2n/(2α + n)},∞), via the Lusin area function and the Littlewood–Paley g*λ-function in terms of centred ball averages. We also show that the assumption p ∊ (max{1, 2n/(2α + n)},∞) is nearly sharp in the sense that these characterizations are no longer true when p ∊ (1, max{1, 2n/(2α + n)}). These characterizations provide a possible new way to introduce Sobolev spaces with smoothness order in (1, 2] on metric measure spaces.

Let $\ell \in \mathbb{N}$ and $\alpha \in (0,2\ell )$. In this article, the authors establish equivalent characterizations of Besov-type spaces, Triebel–Lizorkin-type spaces, and Besov–Morrey spaces via the sequence ${{\{f-{{B}_{\ell ,{{2}^{-k}}}}f\}}_{k}}$ consisting of the difference between $f$ and the ball average ${{B}_{\ell ,{{2}^{-k}}}}f$. These results lead to the introduction of Besov-type spaces, Triebel–Lizorkin-type spaces, and Besov–Morrey spaceswith any positive smoothness order onmetricmeasure spaces. As special cases, the authors obtain a new characterization of Morrey–Sobolev spaces and ${{\text{Q}}_{\alpha }}$ spaces with $\alpha \in (0,1)$, which are of independent interest.