Characterization of ellipses as uniformly dense sets with respect to a family of convex bodies

Let \(K\subset \mathbb R ^N\) be a convex body containing the origin. A measurable set \(G\subset \mathbb R ^N\) with positive Lebesgue measure is said to be uniformly \(K\) -dense if, for any fixed \(r>0\) , the measure of \(G\cap (x+r K)\) is constant when \(x\) varies on the boundary of \(G\) (here, \(x+r K\) denotes a translation of a dilation of \(K\) ). We first prove that \(G\) must always be strictly convex and at least \(C^{1,1}\) -regular; also, if \(K\) is centrally symmetric, \(K\) must be strictly convex, \(C^{1,1}\) -regular and such that \(K=G-G\) up to homotheties; this implies in turn that \(G\) must be \(C^{2,1}\) -regular. Then for \(N=2\) , we prove that \(G\) is uniformly \(K\) -dense if and only if \(K\) and \(G\) are homothetic to the same ellipse. This result was already proven by Amar et al. in 2008 . However, our proof removes their regularity assumptions on \(K\) and \(G\) , and more importantly, it is susceptible to be generalized to higher dimension since, by the use of Minkowski’s inequality and an affine inequality, avoids the delicate computations of the higher-order terms in the Taylor expansion near \(r=0\) for the measure of \(G\cap (x+r\,K)\) (needed in 2008).