Given an arbitrary convex symmetric n-dimensional body, we construct a natural and non-trivial continuous map which associates ellipsoids to ellipsoids, such that the Lowner-John ellipsoid of the body is its unique fixed point. A new characterization of the Lowner-John ellipsoid is obtained, and we also gain information regarding the contact points of inscribed ellipsoids with the body.
The aim of this paper is to develop the $L_p$ John ellipsoid for the geometry of log-concave functions. Using the results of the $L_p$ Minkowski theory for log-concave function established in \cite{fan-xin-ye-geo2020}, we characterize the $L_p$ John ellipsoid for log-concave function, and establish some inequalities of the $L_p$ John ellipsoid for log-concave function. Finally, the analog of Ball's volume ratio inequality for the $L_p$ John ellipsoid of log-concave function is established.
Using an idea of Voronoi in the geometric theory of positive definite quadratic forms, we give a transparent proof of John's characterization of the unique ellipsoid of maximum volume contained in a convex body. The same idea applies to the 'hard part' of a generalization of John's theorem and shows the difficulties of the corresponding 'easy part'.
It is natural to ask whether the center of mass of a convex body $K\subset \mathbb{R}^n$ lies in its John ellipsoid $B_K$, i.e., in the maximal volume ellipsoid contained in $K$. This question is relevant to the efficiency of many algorithms for convex bodies. In this paper, we obtain an unexpected negative result. There exists a convex body $K\subset \mathbb{R}^n$ such that its center of mass does not lie in the John ellipsoid $B_K$ inflated $(1-C\sqrt{\frac{\log(n)} {n}})n$ times about the center of $B_K$. Moreover, there exists a polytope $P \subset \mathbb{R}^n$ with $O(n^2)$ facets whose …
We introduce a new way of representing logarithmically concave functions on $\mathbb{R}^{d}$. It allows us to extend the notion of the largest volume ellipsoid contained in a convex body to the setting of logarithmically concave functions as follows. For every $s>0$, we define a class of non-negative functions on $\mathbb{R}^{d}$ derived from ellipsoids in $\mathbb{R}^{d+1}$. For any log-concave function $f$ on $\mathbb{R}^{d}$, and any fixed $s>0$, we consider functions belonging to this class, and find the one with the largest integral under the condition that it is pointwise less than or eq…
We define a one parameter family of positions of a convex body which interpolates between the John position and the Loewner position: for $r>0$, we say that $K$ is in maximal intersection position of radius $r$ if $\textrm{Vol}_{n}(K\cap rB_{2}^{n})\geq \textrm{Vol}_{n}(K\cap rTB_{2}^{n})$ for all $T\in SL_{n}$. We show that under mild conditions on $K$, each such position induces a corresponding isotropic measure on the sphere, which is simply a normalized Lebesgue measure on $r^{-1}K\cap S^{n-1}$. In particular, for $r_{M}$ satisfying $r_{M}^{n}κ_{n}=\textrm{Vol}_{n}(K)$, the maximal interse…
The largest discs contained in a regular tetrahedron lie in its faces. The proof is closely related to the theorem of Fritz John characterising ellipsoids of maximal volume contained in convex bodies.
A convex body K has associated with it a unique circumscribed ellipsoid CE(K) with minimum volume, and a unique inscribed ellipsoid IE(K) with maximum volume. We first give a unified, modern exposition of the basic theory of these extremal ellipsoids using the semi-infinite programming approach pioneered by Fritz John in his seminal 1948 paper. We then investigate the automorphism groups of convex bodies and their extremal ellipsoids. We show that if the automorphism group of a convex body K is large enough, then it is possible to determine the extremal ellipsoids CE(K) and IE(K) exactly, usin…
Recall that a convex body $K$ is in John's position if the unit Euclidean ball is the maximal volume ellipsoid contained in $K$. Approximating convex body in John's position by polytopes we obtain the following results. 1. Let $n>R_n\ge 1$ be a sequence such that $\lim_{n\rightarrow \infty} \frac{R_n}{n}=0$. For a sufficiently large $n$, we can construct a convex body $K\subset \mathbb{R}^n$ in John's position such that there is no $P$, polytope with a polynomial number of facets in $n$ such that $K\subset P\subset R_nK$; 2. For a sufficiently large $n$, there is a convex body $K\subset \mathb…
As a discrete counterpart to the classical John theorem on the approximation of (symmetric) $n$-dimensional convex bodies $K$ by ellipsoids, Tao and Vu introduced so called generalized arithmetic progressions $P(A,b)\subset Z^n$ in order to cover (many of) the lattice points inside a convex body by a simple geometric structure. Among others, they proved that there exists a generalized arithmetic progressions $P(A,b)$ such that $P(A,b)\subset K\cap Z^n\subset P(A,O(n)^{3n/2}b)$. Here we show that this bound can be lowered to $n^{O(\ln n)}$ and study some general properties of so called unimodul…
Given a centrally symmetric convex body $K \subset \mathbb{R}^d$ and a positive number $λ$, we consider, among all ellipsoids $E \subset \mathbb{R}^d$ of volume $λ$, those that best approximate $K$ with respect to the symmetric difference metric, or equivalently that maximize the volume of $E\cap K$: these are the maximal intersection (MI) ellipsoids introduced by Artstein-Avidan and Katzin. The question of uniqueness of MI ellipsoids (under the obviously necessary assumption that $λ$ is between the volumes of the John and the Loewner ellipsoids of $K$) is open in general. We provide a positiv…
We prove a conjecture of B. Grünbaum stating that the set of affine invariant points of a convex body equals to the set of points invariant under all affine linear symmetries of the convex body. As a consequence we give a short proof on the fact that the affine space of affine linear points is infinite dimensional. In particular, we show that the set of affine invariant points with no dual is of second category. We investigate extremal cases for a class of symmetry measures. We show that the center of the John and Löwner ellipsoid can be far apart and we give the optimal order for the extremal…
In this paper we prove the Gromov--Milman conjecture (the Dvoretzky type theorem) for homogeneous polynomials on $\mathbb R^n$, and improve bounds on the number $n(d,k)$ in the analogous conjecture for odd degrees $d$ (this case is known as the Birch theorem) and complex polynomials. We also consider a stronger conjecture on the homogeneous polynomial fields in the canonical bundle over real and complex Grassmannians. This conjecture is much stronger and false in general, but it is proved in the cases of $d=2$ (for $k$'s of certain type), odd $d$, and the complex Grassmannian (for odd and even…