Estimates for the Poisson kernel and Hardy spaces on compact manifolds

We study Hardy spaces on the boundary of a smooth open subset or R-n and prove that they can be defined either through the intrinsic maximal function or through Poisson integrals, yielding identical spaces. This extends to any smooth open subset of R-n results already known for the unit ball. As an application, a characterization of the weak boundary values of functions that belong to holomorphic Hardy spaces is given, which implies an F. and M. Riesz type theorem. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.