Sharp Solyanik Estimates for Discrete and Ergodic Hardy–Littlewood Maximal Operators

Let $U_1,\dots,U_n$ be commuting invertible measure-preserving transformations of a probability space, and let $C^{*}_{\mathrm{HL}}(α)$ denote the sharp Tauberian constant of the associated ergodic uncentered Hardy–Littlewood maximal operator. Hagelstein and Parissis showed that $C^{*}_{\mathrm{HL}}(α)-1\lesssim_n(1/α-1)^{1/(n(n+1))}$ as $α\to1^-$ and asked whether this exponent is sharp. We prove that $C^{*}_{\mathrm{HL}}(α)-1\lesssim_n(1/α-1)^{1/n}$ for all such transformations, and that this is sharp: equality of the ergodic and discrete Tauberian constants holds for every action admitting arbitrarily large Rokhlin towers (in particular for every free action, ergodic or not), and the discrete constant satisfies $\widetilde{C}_{\mathrm{HL}}(α)-1\asymp_n(1/α-1)^{1/n}$. For $n\ge2$ the sharp ergodic exponent $1/n$ is strictly smaller than the sharp Euclidean exponent $2/(n+1)$ recently obtained by Mukherjee; the discrepancy is caused by a lattice ``first layer'' effect. We also show that the discrete Tauberian constants of the Hardy–Littlewood and strong maximal operators dominate their Euclidean counterparts; for the strong maximal operator this yields $C^{*}_{\mathrm{S}}=C_{\mathrm{S}}$ for every free action.