Concavity properties of extensions of the parallel volume

In this paper we establish concavity properties of two extensions of the classical notion of the outer parallel volume. On the one hand, we replace the Lebesgue measure by more general measures. On the other hand, we consider a functional version of the outer parallel sets.Comment: - Corrected typos - References updated - 19 page

A note on an LpL^p-Brunn-Minkowski inequality for convex measures in the unconditional case

We consider a different $L^p$-Minkowski combination of compact sets in $\mathbb{R}^n$ than the one introduced by Firey and we prove an $L^p$-Brunn-Minkowski inequality, $p \in [0,1]$, for a general class of measures called convex measures that includes log-concave measures, under unconditional assumptions. As a consequence, we derive concavity properties of the function $t \mapsto \mu(t^{\frac{1}{p}} A)$, $p \in (0,1]$, for unconditional convex measures $\mu$ and unconditional convex body $A$ in $\mathbb{R}^n$. We also prove that the (B)-conjecture for all uniform measures is equivalent to the (B)-conjecture for all log-concave measures, completing recent works by Saroglou.Comment: 15 page

On the improvement of concavity of convex measures

We prove that a general class of measures, which includes $\log$-concave measures, is $\frac{1}{n}$-concave according to the terminology of Borell, with additional assumptions on the measures or on the sets, such as symmetries. This generalizes results of Gardner and Zvavitch.Comment: Corrected typos, 14 page

The convexification effect of Minkowski summation

Let us define for a compact set $A \subset \mathbb{R}^n$ the sequence $$A(k) = \left\{\frac{a_1+\cdots +a_k}{k}: a_1, \ldots, a_k\in A\right\}=\frac{1}{k}\Big(\underset{k\ {\rm times}}{\underbrace{A + \cdots + A}}\Big).$$ It was independently proved by Shapley, Folkman and Starr (1969) and by Emerson and Greenleaf (1969) that $A(k)$ approaches the convex hull of $A$ in the Hausdorff distance induced by the Euclidean norm as $k$ goes to $\infty$. We explore in this survey how exactly $A(k)$ approaches the convex hull of $A$, and more generally, how a Minkowski sum of possibly different compact sets approaches convexity, as measured by various indices of non-convexity. The non-convexity indices considered include the Hausdorff distance induced by any norm on $\mathbb{R}^n$, the volume deficit (the difference of volumes), a non-convexity index introduced by Schneider (1975), and the effective standard deviation or inner radius. After first clarifying the interrelationships between these various indices of non-convexity, which were previously either unknown or scattered in the literature, we show that the volume deficit of $A(k)$ does not monotonically decrease to 0 in dimension 12 or above, thus falsifying a conjecture of Bobkov et al. (2011), even though their conjecture is proved to be true in dimension 1 and for certain sets $A$ with special structure. On the other hand, Schneider's index possesses a strong monotonicity property along the sequence $A(k)$, and both the Hausdorff distance and effective standard deviation are eventually monotone (once $k$ exceeds $n$). Along the way, we obtain new inequalities for the volume of the Minkowski sum of compact sets, falsify a conjecture of Dyn and Farkhi (2004), demonstrate applications of our results to combinatorial discrepancy theory, and suggest some questions worthy of further investigation.Comment: 60 pages, 7 figures. v2: Title changed. v3: Added Section 7.2 resolving Dyn-Farkhi conjectur