On classical inequalities for autocorrelations and autoconvolutions

Abstract: In this paper we study an autocorrelation inequality proposed by Barnard and Steinerberger. The study of these problems is motivated by a classical problem in additive combinatorics. We establish the existence of extremizers to this inequality, for a general class of weights, including Gaussian functions (as studied by the second author and Ramos) and characteristic function (as originally studied by Barnard and Steinerberger). Moreover, via a discretization argument and numerical analysis, we find some almost optimal approximation for the best constant allowed in this inequality. We also discuss some other related problem about autoconvolutions.