This is an extended version of a talk on October 4, 2004 at the research seminar ``Differential geometry and applications'' (headed by Academician A. T. Fomenko) at Moscow State University. The paper contains an overview of available (but far from well-known) results about the Blaschke addition of convex bodies, some new theorems on the monotonicity of the volume of convex bodies (in particular, convex polyhedra with parallel faces) as well as description of a software for visualization of polyhedra with prescribed outward normals and face areas.
Mahler's conjecture asks whether the cube is a minimizer for the volume product of a body and its polar in the class of symmetric convex bodies in R^n. The corresponding inequality to the conjecture is sometimes called the the reverse Blaschke-Santalo inequality. The conjecture is known in dimension two and in several special cases. In the class of unconditional convex bodies, Saint Raymond confirmed the conjecture, and Meyer and Reisner, independently, characterized the equality case. In this paper we present a stability version of these results and also show that any symmetric convex body, w…
A stability version of the Blaschke-Santaló inequality and the affine isoperimetric inequality for convex bodies of dimension n>2 is proved. The first step is the reduction to the case when the convex body is o-symmetric and has axial rotational symmetry. This step works for related inequalities compatible with Steiner symmetrization. Secondly, for these convex bodies, a stability version of the characterization of ellipsoids by the fact that each hyperplane section is centrally symmetric is established.
In this paper we prove an extension of the Blaschke-Lebesgue theorem for a family of convex domains called disk-polygons. Also, this provides yet another new proof of the Blaschke-Lebesgue theorem.
We present a complete 3-dimensional Blaschke-Santaló diagram for planar convex bodies with respect to the four classical magnitudes inner and outer radius, diameter and (minimal) width in euclidean spaces.
The Blaschke-Lebesgue Theorem states that among all planar convex domains of given constant width B the Reuleaux triangle has minimal area. It is the purpose of the present note to give a direct proof of this theorem by analyzing the underlying variational problem. The advantages of the proof are that it shows uniqueness (modulo rigid deformations such as rotation and translation) and leads analytically to the shape of the area-minimizing domain. Most previous proofs have relied on foreknowledge of the minimizing domain. Key parts of the analysis extend to the higher-dimensional situation, whe…
Rotation intertwining maps from the set of convex bodies in Rn into itself that are continuous linear operators with respect to Minkowski and Blaschke addition are investigated. The main focus is on Blaschke-Minkowski homomorphisms. We show that such maps are represented by a spherical convolution operator. An application of this representation is a complete classification of all even Blaschke-Minkowski homomorphisms which shows that these maps behave in many respects similar to the well known projection body operator. Among further applications is the following result: If an even Blaschke-Min…
The Blaschke rolling disk theorem is a classical inclusion principle in differential geometry. This states that a planar convex domain whose boundary is a curve of class $C^2$ with (signed) curvature not exceeding a positive constant $κ$ is such that for each point on its boundary there exists a disk of radius ${1}/κ$ tangent to the boundary included in the closure of the domain. We describe geometric conditions relying exclusively on curvature and independent of any kind of convexity that allows us to give necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of rolling disks for planar domai…
A characterization of Blaschke addition as a map between origin-symmetric convex bodies is established. This results from a new characterization of Minkowski addition as a map between origin-symmetric zonoids, combined with the use of Lévy-Prokhorov metrics. A full set of examples is provided that show the results are in a sense the best possible.
This paper is dedicated to study the sine version of polar bodies and establish the $L_p$-sine Blaschke-Santaló inequality for the $L_p$-sine centroid body. The $L_p$-sine centroid body $Λ_p K$ for a star body $K\subset\mathbb{R}^n$ is a convex body based on the $L_p$-sine transform, and its associated Blaschke-Santaló inequality provides an upper bound for the volume of $Λ_p^{\circ}K$, the polar body of $Λ_p K$, in terms of the volume of $K$. Thus, this inequality can be viewed as the "sine cousin" of the $L_p$ Blaschke-Santaló inequality established by Lutwak and Zhang. As $p\rightarrow \inf…
H. Guggenheimer generalized the planar volume product problem for locally convex curves $C$ enclosing the origin $k \ge 2$ times. He conjectured that the minimal volume product $V(C)V(C^*)$ for these curves is attained if the curve consists of the longest diagonals of a regular $(2k+1)$-gon, with centre $0$, these diagonals taken always in the positive orientation. This conjectured minimum is of the form $k^2 + O(k)$. We investigate special cases of this conjecture. We prove it for locally convex $n$-gons with $2k+1 \le n \le 4k$, if the central angles at $0$ of all sides are equal to $2k π/n$…
We describe a characterization of convex polyhedra in $\h^3$ in terms of their dihedral angles, developed by Rivin. We also describe some geometric and combinatorial consequences of that theory. One of these consequences is a combinatorial characterization of convex polyhedra in $\E^3$ all of whose vertices lie on the unit sphere. That resolves a problem posed by Jakob Steiner in 1832.
We establish new functional versions of the Blaschke-Santaló inequality on the volume product of a convex body which generalize to the non-symmetric setting an inequality of K. Ball and we give a simple proof of the case of equality. As a corollary, we get some inequalities for $\log$-concave functions and Legendre transforms which extend the recent result of Artstein, Klartag and Milman, with its equality case.
We explore an interplay between an analysis of diffusion flows such as Ornstein--Uhlenbeck flow and Fokker--Planck flow and inequalities from convex geometry regarding the volume product. More precisely, we introduce new types of hypercontractivity for the Ornstein--Uhlenbeck flow and clarify how these imply the Blaschke--Santaló inequality and the inverse Santaló inequality, also known as Mahler's conjecture. Motivated the link, we establish two types of new hypercontractivity in this paper. The first one is an improvement of Borell's reverse hypercontractivity inequality in terms of Nelson's…
This work provides two sufficient conditions in terms of sections or projections for a convex body to be a polytope. These conditions are necessary as well.
A convex polyhedron, that is, a compact convex subset of $\mathbb{R}^3$ which is the intersection of finitely many closed half-spaces, can be rectified by taking the convex hull of the midpoints of the edges of the polyhedron. We derive expressions for the side lengths and areas of rectifications of regular polygons in plane, and use these results to compute surface areas and volumes of various convex polyhedra. We introduce rectification sequences and show that there are exactly two disjoint pure rectification sequences generated by the platonic solids.
We generalize Cauchy's celebrated theorem on the global rigidity of convex polyhedra in Euclidean $3$-space $\mathbb{E}^{3}$ to the context of circle polyhedra in the $2$-sphere $\mathbb{S}^{2}$. We prove that any two convex and proper non-unitary c-polyhedra with Möbius-congruent faces that are consistently oriented are Möbius-congruent. Our result implies the global rigidity of convex inversive distance circle packings in the Riemann sphere as well as that of certain hyperideal hyperbolic polyhedra in $\mathbb{H}^{3}$.
Weakly convex polyhedra which are star-shaped with respect to one of their vertices are infinitesimally rigid. This is a partial answer to the question whether every decomposable weakly convex polyhedron is infinitesimally rigid. The proof uses a recent result of Izmestiev on the geometry of convex caps.
On a convex surface $S$, the antipodal map $F$ associates to a point $p$ the set of farthest points from $p$, with respect to the intrinsic metric. $S$ is called a Steinhaus surface if $F$ is a single-valued involution. We prove that any convex polyhedron has an open and dense set of points $p$ admitting a unique antipode $F_p$, which in turn admits a unique antipode $F_{F_p}$, distinct from $p$. In particular, no convex polyhedron is Steinhaus.
It was shown by Nachbin in 1950 that an $n$-dimensional normed space $X$ is injective or equivalently is an absolute 1-Lipschitz retract if and only if $X$ is linearly isometric to $l_\infty^n$ (i.e., $\mathbb{R}^n$ endowed with the $l_{\infty}$-metric). We give an effective convex geometric characterization of injective convex polyhedra in $l_{\infty}^n$. As an application, we prove that if the set of solutions to a linear system of inequalities with at most two variables per inequality is non-empty, then it is injective when endowed with the $l_{\infty}$-metric.
We present structures comprised of identical convex polyhedra which are interlocked geometrically. These sets cannot be disassembled by removing individual polyhedra by translations and/or rotations. The shapes that permit interlocking arrangements include all five platonic solids. Criteria for interlocking based on transformations of the cross-sections of the elements in a 3D reconstruction of a layer from its middle cross-section are formulated. A generalization to higher dimensions is also given. In particular, an interlocking layer of four-dimensional cubes is described.
We study two notions. One is that of spindle convexity. A set of circumradius not greater than one is spindle convex if, for any pair of its points, it contains every short circular arc of radius at least one, connecting them. The other objects of study are bodies obtained as intersections of finitely many balls of the same radius, called ball-polyhedra. We find analogues of several results on convex polyhedral sets for ball-polyhedra.
The classical Cauchy rigidity theorem for convex polytopes reads that if two convex polytopes have isometric developments then they are congruent. In other words, we can decide whether two polyhedra are isometric or not by using their developments only. In this article, we study a similar problem about whether it is possible, using only the developments of two convex polyhedra of Euclidean 3-space, to understand that these polyhedra are (or are not) affine-equivalent.
Given a convex polyhedral surface P, we define a tailoring as excising from P a simple polygonal domain that contains one vertex v, and whose boundary can be sutured closed to a new convex polyhedron via Alexandrov's Gluing Theorem. In particular, a digon-tailoring cuts off from P a digon containing v, a subset of P bounded by two equal-length geodesic segments that share endpoints, and can then zip closed. In the first part of this monograph, we primarily study properties of the tailoring operation on convex polyhedra. We show that P can be reshaped to any polyhedral convex surface Q a subset…
This paper is a study of the interaction between the combinatorics of boundaries of convex polytopes in arbitrary dimension and their metric geometry. Let S be the boundary of a convex polytope of dimension d+1, or more generally let S be a `convex polyhedral pseudomanifold'. We prove that S has a polyhedral nonoverlapping unfolding into R^d, so the metric space S is obtained from a closed (usually nonconvex) polyhedral ball in R^d by identifying pairs of boundary faces isometrically. Our existence proof exploits geodesic flow away from a source point v in S, which is the exponential map to S …
The paper is centered around a new proof of the infinitesimal rigidity of convex polyhedra. The proof is based on studying derivatives of the discrete Hilbert-Einstein functional on the space of "warped polyhedra" with a fixed metric on the boundary. This approach is in a sense dual to using derivatives of the volume in order to prove the Gauss infinitesimal rigidity of convex polyhedra, which deals with deformations that preserve face normals and face areas. In the spherical and in the hyperbolic-de Sitter space, there is a perfect duality between the Hilbert-Einstein functional and the volum…
We prove that every positively-weighted tree T can be realized as the cut locus C(x) of a point x on a convex polyhedron P, with T weights matching C(x) lengths. If T has n leaves, P has (in general) n+1 vertices. We show there are in fact a continuum of polyhedra P each realizing T for some x on P. Three main tools in the proof are properties of the star unfolding of P, Alexandrov's gluing theorem, and a cut-locus partition lemma. The construction of P from T is surprisingly simple.
Motivated by the Blaschke-Santaló inequality, we define for a convex body K in ${\bf R}^n$ and for $t \in {\bf R}$ the Santaló-regions S(K,t) of K. We investigate properties of these sets and relate them to a concept of Affine Differential Geometry, the affine surface area of K.
We prove that the complement ${\mathcal S}:={\mathbb R}^3\setminus{\mathcal K}$ of a 3-dimensional convex polyhedron ${\mathcal K}\subset{\mathbb R}^3$ and its closure $\overline{\mathcal S}$ are polynomial images of ${\mathbb R}^3$. The former techniques cannot be extended in general to represent such semialgebraic sets ${\mathcal S}$ and $\overline{\mathcal S}$ as polynomial images of ${\mathbb R}^n$ if $n\geq4$.
We give the quasi--Euclidean classification of the maximal (with respect to the $f$--vector) alcoved polyhedra. The $f$--vector of these maximal convex bodies is $(20,30,12)$, so they are simple dodecahedra. We find eight quasi--Euclidean classes. This classification, which preserves angles, is finer than the known combinatorial classification (found in 2012 by Jiménez and de la Puente), which has only six classes. Each alcoved polyhedron $\mathcal{P}$ is represented by a unique visualized idempotent matrix $A$. Some 2--minors of $A$ are invariants of $\mathcal{P}$: they are the tropical edge-…
We present the multidimensional versions of the Pleijel and Ambartzumian--Pleijel identities. We also obtain the generalization of both the Blaschke--Petkantschin and Zähle formulae considering the case when some points are chosen inside the convex body and some on the boundary. Moreover, a version of the Zähle formula for the polytopes is derived.
We show that every convex polyhedron admits a simple edge unfolding after an affine transformation. In particular there exists no combinatorial obstruction to a positive resolution of Durer's unfoldability problem, which answers a question of Croft, Falconer, and Guy. Among other techniques, the proof employs a topological characterization for embeddings among the planar immersions of the disk.
Let $P$ be a (non necessarily convex) embedded polyhedron in $\R^3$, with its vertices on an ellipsoid. Suppose that the interior of $P$ can be decomposed into convex polytopes without adding any vertex. Then $P$ is infinitesimally rigid. More generally, let $P$ be a polyhedron bounding a domain which is the union of polytopes $C_1, ..., C_n$ with disjoint interiors, whose vertices are the vertices of $P$. Suppose that there exists an ellipsoid which contains no vertex of $P$ but intersects all the edges of the $C_i$. Then $P$ is infinitesimally rigid. The proof is based on some geometric prop…
We say that an even continuous function $H$ on the unit sphere $Ω$ in $R^n$ admits the Blaschke-Levy representation with $q>0$ if there exists an even function $b\in L_1(Ω)$ so that $H^q(x)=\int_Ω|(x,ξ)|^q b(ξ)\ dξ$ for every $x\in Ω.$ This representation has numerous applications in convex geometry, probability and Banach space theory. In this paper, we present a simple formula (in terms of the derivatives of $H$) for calculating $b$ out of $H.$ We use this formula to give a sufficient condition for isometric embedding of a space into $L_p$ which contributes to the 1937 P.Levy's problem and t…
The mean width is a measure on three-dimensional convex bodies that enjoys equal status with volume and surface area [Rota]. As the phrase suggests, it is the mean of a probability density f. We verify formulas for mean widths of the regular tetrahedron and the cube. Higher-order moments of f_tetra and f_cube have not been examined until now. Assume that each polyhedron has edges of unit length. We deduce that the mean square width of the regular tetrahedron is 1/3+(3+sqrt(3))/(3*pi) and the mean square width of the cube is 1+4/pi.
Let $P \subset \R^3$ be a polyhedron. It was conjectured that if $P$ is weakly convex (i. e. its vertices lie on the boundary of a strictly convex domain) and decomposable (i. e. $P$ can be triangulated without adding new vertices), then it is infinitesimally rigid. We prove this conjecture under a weak additional assumption of codecomposability. The proof relies on a result of independent interest concerning the Hilbert-Einstein function of a triangulated convex polyhedron. We determine the signature of the Hessian of that function with respect to deformations of the interior edges. In partic…
A convex polyhedron is called monostable if it can rest in stable position only on one of its faces. The aim of this paper is to investigate three questions of Conway, regarding monostable polyhedra, which first appeared in a 1969 paper of Goldberg and Guy (M. Goldberg and R.K. Guy, Stability of polyhedra (J.H. Conway and R.K. Guy), SIAM Rev. 11 (1969), 78-82). In this note we answer two of these problems and make a conjecture about the third one. The main tool of our proof is a general theorem describing approximations of smooth convex bodies by convex polyhedra in terms of their static equil…
A pseudo-edge graph of a convex polyhedron K is a 3-connected embedded graph in K whose vertices coincide with those of K, whose edges are distance minimizing geodesics, and whose faces are convex. We construct a convex polyhedron K in Euclidean 3-space with a pseudo-edge graph with respect to which K is not unfoldable. The proof is based on a result of Pogorelov on convex caps with prescribed curvature, and an unfoldability obstruction for almost flat convex caps due to Tarasov. Our example, which has 340 vertices, significantly simplifies an earlier construction by Tarasov, and confirms that…
The main result is that every complete finite area hyperbolic metric on a sphere with punctures can be uniquely realized as the induced metric on the surface of a convex ideal polyhedron in hyperbolic 3-space. A number of other observations are included.
