BMO and the John-Nirenberg Inequality on Measure Spaces

Abstract We study the space BMO𝒢 (𝕏) in the general setting of a measure space 𝕏 with a fixed collection 𝒢 of measurable sets of positive and finite measure, consisting of functions of bounded mean oscillation on sets in 𝒢. The aim is to see how much of the familiar BMO machinery holds when metric notions have been replaced by measure-theoretic ones. In particular, three aspects of BMO are considered: its properties as a Banach space, its relation with Muckenhoupt weights, and the John-Nirenberg inequality. We give necessary and sufficient conditions on a decomposable measure space 𝕏 for BMO𝒢 (𝕏) to be a Banach space modulo constants. We also develop the notion of a Denjoy family 𝒢, which guarantees that functions in BMO𝒢 (𝕏) satisfy the John-Nirenberg inequality on the elements of 𝒢.