Bounds on Kolmogorov widths and sampling recovery for classes with small mixed smoothness

Results on asymptotic characteristics of classes of functions with mixed smoothness are obtained in the paper. Our main interest is in estimating the Kolmogorov widths of classes with small mixed smoothness. We prove the corresponding bounds for the unit balls of the trigonometric polynomials with frequencies from a hyperbolic cross. We demonstrate how our results on the Kolmogorov widths imply new upper bounds for the optimal sampling recovery in the $L_2$ norm of functions with small mixed smoothness.