A Characterization of Some Mixed Volumes via the Brunn–Minkowski Inequality

We consider a functional $\mathcal{F}$ on the space of convex bodies in ? ⁿ of the form $$ {\mathcal{F}}(K)=\int_{\mathbb{S}^{n-1}} f(u) \mathrm{S}_{n-1}(K,du), $$ where $f\in C(\mathbb{S}^{n-1})$ is a given continuous function on the unit sphere of ? ⁿ , K is a convex body in ? ⁿ , n≥3, and S _n?1(K,?) is the area measure of K. We prove that $\mathcal{F}$ satisfies an inequality of Brunn–Minkowski type if and only if f is the support function of a convex body, i.e., $\mathcal{F}$ is a mixed volume. As a consequence, we obtain a characterization of translation invariant, continuous valuations which are homogeneous of degree n?1 and satisfy a Brunn–Minkowski type inequality.     

Multiple criteria problems over Minkowski balls

Under study are some vector optimization problems over the space of Minkowski balls, i.e., symmetric convex compact subsets in Euclidean space. A typical problem requires to achieve the best result in the presence of conflicting goals; e.g., given the surface area of a symmetric convex body $\mathfrak{x}$ , we try to maximize the volume of $\mathfrak{x}$ and minimize the width of $\mathfrak{x}$ simultaneously.     

LR Characterization of Chirotopes of Finite Planar Families of Pairwise Disjoint Convex bodies

We extend the classical LR characterization of chirotopes of finite planar families of points to chirotopes of finite planar families of pairwise disjoint convex bodies: a map $\chi $ χ on the set of 3-subsets of a finite set $I$ I is a chirotope of finite planar families of pairwise disjoint convex bodies if and only if for every 3-, 4-, and 5-subset $J$ J of $I$ I the restriction of $\chi $ χ to the set of 3-subsets of $J$ J is a chirotope of finite planar families of pairwise disjoint convex bodies. Our main tool is the polarity map, i.e., the map that assigns to a convex body the set of lines missing its interior, from which we derive the key notion of arrangements of double pseudolines, introduced for the first time in this paper.     

Fuchsian convex bodies: basics of Brunn–Minkowski theory

The hyperbolic space ${\mathbb{H}^d}$ can be defined as a pseudo-sphere in the (d + 1) Minkowski space-time. In this paper, a Fuchsian group Γ is a group of linear isometries of the Minkowski space such that ${\mathbb{H}^d/\Gamma}$ is a compact manifold. We introduce Fuchsian convex bodies, which are closed convex sets in Minkowski space, globally invariant for the action of a Fuchsian group. A volume can be associated to each Fuchsian convex body, and, if the group is fixed, Minkowski addition behaves well. Then Fuchsian convex bodies can be studied in the same manner as convex bodies of Euclidean space in the classical Brunn–Minkowski theory. For example, support functions can be defined, as functions on a compact hyperbolic manifold instead of the sphere. The main result is the convexity of the associated volume (it is log concave in the classical setting). This implies analogs of Alexandrov–Fenchel and Brunn–Minkowski inequalities. Here the inequalities are reversed.     

A Question from a Famous Paper of Erdős

Given a convex body $K$ K , consider the smallest number $N$ N so that there is a point $P\in \partial K$ P ∈ ? K such that every circle centred at $P$ P intersects $\partial K$ ? K in at most $N$ N points. In 1946 Erd?s conjectured that $N=2$ N = 2 for all $K$ K , but there are convex bodies for which this is not the case. As far as we know there is no known global upper bound. We show that no convex body has $N=\infty $ N = ∞ and that there are convex bodies for which $N = 6$ N = 6 .     

The generalization of Minkowski problems for polytopes

The generalization of Minkowski problems, such as the $L_p$ and Orlicz Minkowski problems, have caused wide concern recently. In this paper, we will establish the existence of the Orlicz Minkowski problem for polytopes. In particular, a solution to the $L_p$ Minkowski problem for polytopes with $p>1$ is given. By the uniqueness of this solution, we present a new proof of the $L_p$ Minkowski inequality that demonstrates the relationship between these two fundamental theorems of the $L_p$ Brunn–Minkowski theory.     

The differentiability of Banach space-valued functions of bounded variation

In this paper we consider Banach space-valued functions with the compact range. It is shown that if a Banach space-valued function $F:[0,1] \rightarrow X$ is of bounded variation with respect to the Minkowski functional $||.||_{F}$ associated to the closed absolutely convex hull $C_{F}$ of $F([0,1])$ , then $F$ is differentiable almost everywhere on $[0,1]$ .     

Decomposition of Minkowski–Rådström–Hörmander Space to the Direct Sum of Symmetric and Asymmetric Subspaces

Any abstract convex cone S with a uniformity satisfying the law of cancellation can be embedded in a topological vector space $\widetilde{S}$ (Urbański, Bull Acad Pol Sci, Sér Sci Math Astron Phys 24:709–715, 1976). We introduce a notion of a cone symmetry and decompose in Theorem 2.12 a quotient vector space $\widetilde{S}$ into a topological direct sum of its symmetric subspace $\widetilde{S}_s$ and asymmetric subspace $\widetilde{S}_a$ . In Theorem 2.19 we prove a similar decomposition for a normed space $\widetilde{S}$ . In section 3 we apply decomposition to Minkowski–Rådström–Hörmander (MRH) space with three best known norms and four symmetries. In section 4 we obtain a continuous selection from a MRH space over ?² to the family of pairs of nonempty compact convex subsets of ?².     

Convex equipartitions: the spicy chicken theorem

We show that, for any prime power $n$ and any convex body $K$ (i.e., a compact convex set with interior) in $\mathbb{R }^d$ , there exists a partition of $K$ into $n$ convex sets with equal volumes and equal surface areas. Similar results regarding equipartitions with respect to continuous functionals and absolutely continuous measures on convex bodies are also proven. These include a generalization of the ham-sandwich theorem to arbitrary number of convex pieces confirming a conjecture of Kaneko and Kano, a similar generalization of perfect partitions of a cake and its icing, and a generalization of the Gromov–Borsuk–Ulam theorem for convex sets in the model spaces of constant curvature.     

Structure Results for Multiple Tilings in 3D

We study multiple tilings of 3-dimensional Euclidean space by a convex body. In a multiple tiling, a convex body $P$ is translated with a discrete multiset $\Lambda $ in such a way that each point of ${\mathbb {R}}^d$ gets covered exactly $k$ times, except perhaps the translated copies of the boundary of $P$ . It is known that all possible multiple tilers in ${\mathbb {R}}^3$ are zonotopes. In ${\mathbb {R}}^2$ it was known by the work of Kolountzakis (Discrete Comput Geom 23(4):537–553, 2000) that, unless $P$ is a parallelogram, the multiset of translation vectors $\Lambda $ must be a finite union of translated lattices (also known as quasi periodic sets). In that work (Kolountzakis, Discrete Comput Geom 23(4):537–553, 2000) the author asked whether the same quasi-periodic structure on the translation vectors would be true in ${\mathbb {R}}^3$ . Here we prove that this conclusion is indeed true for ${\mathbb {R}}^3$ . Namely, we show that if $P$ is a convex multiple tiler in ${\mathbb {R}}^3$ , with a discrete multiset $\Lambda $ of translation vectors, then $\Lambda $ has to be a finite union of translated lattices, unless $P$ belongs to a special class of zonotopes. This exceptional class consists of two-flat zonotopes $P$ , defined by the Minkowski sum of two 2-dimensional symmetric polygons in ${\mathbb {R}}^3$ , one of which may degenerate into a single line segment. It turns out that rational two-flat zonotopes admit a multiple tiling with an aperiodic (nonquasi-periodic) set of translation vectors $\Lambda $ . We note that it may be quite difficult to offer a visualization of these 3-dimensional non-quasi-periodic tilings, and that we discovered them by using Fourier methods.     

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).     

A Banach–Zarecki Theorem for functions with values in Banach spaces

A Banach–Zarecki Theorem for a Banach space-valued function  \(F : [0,1] \rightarrow X\) with compact range is presented. We define the strong absolute continuity ( \(sAC_{||.||_{F}}\) ) and the bounded variation ( \(BV_{||.||_{F}}\) ) of \(F\) with respect to the Minkowski functional \(||.||_{F}\) associated to the closed absolutely convex hull \(C_{F}\) of \(F([0,1])\) . It is proved that \(F\) is \(sAC_{||.||_{F}}\) if and only if \(F\) is \(BV_{||.||_{F}}\) , weak continuous on \([0,1]\) and satisfies the weak property \((N)\) .     

Refined methods for the identifiability of tensors

We prove that the general tensor of size \(2^n\) and rank \(k\) has a unique decomposition as the sum of decomposable tensors if \(k\le 0.9997\frac{2^n}{n+1}\) (the constant 1 being the optimal value). Similarly, the general tensor of size \(3^n\) and rank \(k\) has a unique decomposition as the sum of decomposable tensors if \(k\le 0.998\frac{3^n}{2n+1}\) (the constant 1 being the optimal value). Some results of this flavor are obtained for tensors of any size, but the explicit bounds obtained are weaker.     

Tensor Rank: Matching Polynomials and Schur Rings

We study the polynomial equations vanishing on tensors of a given rank. By means of polarization we reduce them to elements  $A$ of the group algebra ${\mathbb {Q}}[S_n\times S_n]$ and describe explicit linear equations on the coefficients of  $A$ to vanish on tensors of a given rank. Further, we reduce the study to the Schur ring over the group $S_n\times S_n$ that arises from the diagonal conjugacy action of  $S_n$ . More closely, we consider elements of ${\mathbb {Q}}[S_n\times S_n]$ vanishing on tensors of rank $n-1$ and describe them in terms of triples of Young diagrams, their irreducible characters, and nonvanishing of their Kronecker coefficients. Also, we construct a family of elements in ${\mathbb {Q}}[S_n\times S_n]$ vanishing on tensors of rank $n-1$ and illustrate our approach by a sharp lower bound on the border rank of an explicitly produced tensor. Finally, we apply this construction to prove a lower bound $5n^2/4$ on the border rank of the matrix multiplication tensor (being, of course, weaker than the best known one $(2-\epsilon )\cdot n^2$ , due to Landsberg, Ottaviani).     

Variance asymptotics for random polytopes in smooth convex bodies

Let $K \subset \mathbb R ^d$ be a smooth convex set and let $\mathcal{P }_{\lambda }$ be a Poisson point process on $\mathbb R ^d$ of intensity ${\lambda }$ . The convex hull of $\mathcal{P }_{\lambda }\cap K$ is a random convex polytope $K_{\lambda }$ . As ${\lambda }\rightarrow \infty $ , we show that the variance of the number of $k$ -dimensional faces of $K_{\lambda }$ , when properly scaled, converges to a scalar multiple of the affine surface area of $K$ . Similar asymptotics hold for the variance of the number of $k$ -dimensional faces for the convex hull of a binomial process in $K$ .     

Caffarelli–Kohn–Nirenberg inequality on metric measure spaces with applications

We prove that if a metric measure space satisfies the volume doubling condition and the Caffarelli–Kohn–Nirenberg inequality with the same exponent $n \ge 3$ , then it has exactly the $n$ -dimensional volume growth. As an application, if an $n$ -dimensional Finsler manifold of non-negative $n$ -Ricci curvature satisfies the Caffarelli–Kohn–Nirenberg inequality with the sharp constant, then its flag curvature is identically zero. In the particular case of Berwald spaces, such a space is necessarily isometric to a Minkowski space.     

Semigroups of polygons whose vertices define a centered partition of ℝ n

A partition $\mathfrak{F}$ of a Euclidean space into finite subsets has subgroup property SP if the family of the convex hulls of the leaves of $\mathfrak{F}$ constitutes a subgroup with respect to the Minkowski addition. If $\mathfrak{F}$ consists of orbits of a finite linear groups then SP is equivalent to the fact that the group is a Coxeter group. In this article, this assertion is proved only under the assumption of continuity and centrality of $\mathfrak{F}$ (this means that every leaf is inscribed in some sphere centered at zero). An example is given of a noncentered partition satisfying SP (such partitions cannot be Coxeter partitions).     

Geometry of the Funk metric on Weil–Petersson spaces

We discuss the Funk function $F(x,y)$ on a Teichmüller space with its Weil–Petersson metric $(\mathcal{T },d)$ introduced in Yamada (Convex bodies in Euclidean and Weil–Petersson geometries, 2011), which was originally studied for an open convex subset in a Euclidean space by Funk [cf. Papadopoulos and Troyanov (Math Proc Cambridge Philos Soc 147:419–437, 2009)]. $F(x,y)$ is an asymmetric distance and invariant by the action of the mapping class group. Unlike the original one, $F(x,y)$ is not always convex in $y$ with $x$ fixed (Corollary 2.11, Theorem 5.1). For each pseudo-Anosov mapping class $g$ and a point $x \in \mathcal{T }$ , there exists $E$ such that for all $n\not = 0$ , $ \log |n| -E \le F(x,g^n.x) \le \log |n|+E$ (Corollary 2.10), while $F(x,g^n.x)$ is bounded if $g$ is a Dehn twist (Proposition 2.13). The translation length is defined by $|g|_F=\inf _{x \in \mathcal{T }}F(x,g.x)$ for a map $g: \mathcal{T }\rightarrow \mathcal{T }$ . If $g$ is a pseudo-Anosov mapping class, there exists $Q$ such that for all $n \not = 0$ , $\log |n| -Q \le |g^n|_F \le \log |n| + Q.$ For sufficiently large $n$ , $|g^n|_F >0$ and the infimum is achieved. If $g$ is a Dehn twist, then $|g^n|_F=0$ for each $n$ (Theorem 2.16). Some geodesics in $(\mathcal{T },d)$ are geodesics in terms of $F$ as well. We find a decomposition of $\mathcal{T }$ by sets, each of which is foliated by those geodesics (Theorem 4.10).     

The Set of Packing and Covering Densities of Convex Disks

For every convex disk $K$ (a convex compact subset of the plane, with non-void interior), the packing density $\delta (K)$ and covering density ${\vartheta (K)}$ form an ordered pair of real numbers, i.e., a point in $\mathbb{R }^2$ . The set $\varOmega $ consisting of points assigned this way to all convex disks is the subject of this article. A few known inequalities on $\delta (K)$ and ${\vartheta (K)}$ jointly outline a relatively small convex polygon $P$ that contains $\varOmega $ , while the exact shape of $\varOmega $ remains a mystery. Here we describe explicitly a leaf-shaped convex region $\Lambda $ contained in $\varOmega $ and occupying a good portion of $P$ . The sets $\varOmega _T$ and $\varOmega _L$ of translational packing and covering densities and lattice packing and covering densities are defined similarly, restricting the allowed arrangements of $K$ to translated copies or lattice arrangements, respectively. Due to affine invariance of the translative and lattice density functions, the sets $\varOmega _T$ and $\varOmega _L$ are compact. Furthermore, the sets $\varOmega , \,\varOmega _T$ and $\varOmega _L$ contain the subsets $\varOmega ^\star , \,\varOmega _T^\star $ and $\varOmega _L^\star $ respectively, corresponding to the centrally symmetric convex disks $K$ , and our leaf $\Lambda $ is contained in each of $\varOmega ^\star , \,\varOmega _T^\star $ and $\varOmega _L^\star $ .