Sharp Lower Bounds on the Manifold Widths of Sobolev and Besov Spaces

We consider the problem of determining the asymptotics of the manifold $n$-widths of Sobolev and Besov spaces with error measured in the $L_p$-norm. The manifold widths control how efficiently these spaces can be approximated by general non-linear parametric methods with the restriction that the parameter selection and parameterization maps must be continuous. Existing upper and lower bounds only match when the Sobolev or Besov smoothness index $q$ satisfies $q\leq p$. We close this gap and extend the existing lower bounds to all $1\leq p,q\leq \infty$. In the process, we show that the Bernstein widths, which are typically used to lower bound the manifold widths, may decay asymptotically slower than the manifold widths.