An Invitation to Generalized Minkowski Geometry

The present thesis contributes to the theory of generalized Minkowski spaces as a continuation of Minkowski geometry, i.e., the geometry of finite-dimensional normed spaces over the field of real numbers. In a generalized Minkowski space, distance and length measurement is provided by a gauge, whose definition mimics the definition of a norm but lacks the symmetry requirement. This seemingly minor change in the definition is deliberately chosen. On the one hand, many techniques from Minkowski spaces can be adapted to generalized Minkowski spaces because several phenomena in Minkowski geometry simply do not depend on the symmetry of distance measurement. On the other hand, the possible asymmetry of the distance measurement set up by gauges is nonetheless meaningful and interesting for applications, e.g., in location science. In this spirit, the presentation of this thesis is led mainly by minimization problems from convex optimization and location science which are appealing to convex geometers, too. In addition, we study metrically defined objects, which may receive a new interpretation when we measure distances asymmetrically. To this end, we use a combination of methods from convex analysis and convex geometry to relate the properties of these objects to the shape of the unit ball of the generalized Minkowski space under consideration

The stars at infinity in several complex variables

This text reviews certain notions in metric geometry that may have further applications to problems in complex geometry and holomorphic dynamics in several variables. The discussion contains a few unrecorded results and formulates a number of questions related to the asymptotic geometry and boundary estimates of bounded complex domains, boundary extensions of biholomorphisms, the dynamics of holomorphic self-maps, Teichm\"uller theory, and the existence of constant scalar curvature metrics on compact K\"ahler manifolds.Comment: 21 page