Critical discrete Hardy inequalities in $L^p$

We establish ground-state representations and critical Hardy inequalities in the discrete $L^p$ setting. In particular, we construct critical Hardy weights for the discrete Dirichlet Laplacian on the half-line and the discrete fractional Laplacian on the integers for all $p\in(1,\infty)$. Our approach uses Sobolev--Bregman forms, for which the ground-state representations are exact identities and the corresponding Hardy weights are expressed through linear operators acting on powers of positive superharmonic functions.