This paper presents an approach, based on interpolation theory of operators, to the study of interpolating sequences for interpolation Banach spaces between Hardy spaces. It is shown that the famous Carleson result for H∞ can be lifted to a large class of abstract Hardy spaces. A description is provided of the range of the Carleson operator defined on interpolation spaces between the classical Hardy spaces in terms of uniformly separated sequences. A key role in this description is played by some general interpolation results proved in the paper. As by-products, novel results are obtained which extend the Shapiro–Shields result on the characterisation of interpolation sequences for the classical Hardy spaces Hp. Applications to Hardy–Lorentz, Hardy–Marcinkiewicz and Hardy–Orlicz spaces are presented.

Every bounded linear operator that maps ${H}^{1} $ to ${L}^{1} $ and ${L}^{2} $ to ${L}^{2} $ is bounded from ${L}^{p} $ to ${L}^{p} $ for each $p\in (1, 2)$, by a famous interpolation result of Fefferman and Stein. We prove ${L}^{p} $-norm bounds that grow like $O(1/ (p- 1))$ as $p\downarrow 1$. This growth rate is optimal, and improves significantly on the previously known exponential bound $O({2}^{1/ (p- 1)} )$. For $p\in (2, \infty )$, we prove explicit ${L}^{p} $ estimates on each bounded linear operator mapping ${L}^{\infty } $ to bounded mean oscillation ($\mathit{BMO}$) and ${L}^{2} $ to ${L}^{2} $. This $\mathit{BMO}$ interpolation result implies the ${H}^{1} $ result above, by duality. In addition, we obtain stronger results by working with dyadic ${H}^{1} $ and dyadic $\mathit{BMO}$. The proofs proceed by complex interpolation, after we develop an optimal dyadic ‘good lambda’ inequality for the dyadic $\sharp $-maximal operator.