Estimates for the maximal singular integral in terms of the singular integral:the case of even kernels

The purpose of this paper is to describe the smooth homogeneous Calderon-Zygmund operators for which the maximal singular integral T*f may be controlled by the singular integral Tf. We consider two types of control. The first is the L2 estimate of T*f by Tf, namely the estimate of the L2 norm of T*f by a constant times the L2 norm of Tf. The second is the pointwise estimate of T*f(x) by a constant times M(Tf)(x), where M denotes the Hardy-Littlewood maximal operator. Notice that this is an improved variant of Cotlar's inequality, because the term Mf(x) is missing on the right hand side. Our main result states that, for even operators, both are equivalent to a purely algebraic condition formulated in terms of the expansion of the kernel in spherical harmonics. The condition holds by higher order Riesz transforms, which then satisfy an improved version of Cotlar's inequality