L_p-Rogers--Shephard type inequalities for L_p-zonoids and symmetric bodies

We study generalizations of the classical Rogers--Shephard inequalities in the framework of Firey $L_p$-summation. We first consider the class of asymmetric $L_p$-zonoids. In this setting, we show that proving a sharp $L_p$-Rogers--Shephard inequality for asymmetric $L_p$-zonoids in $\mathbb{R}^n$ is equivalent to proving a sharp inequality between the volumes of projections of $B_q^m\cap \mathbb{R}^m_+$ and $B_q^m$ onto an $n$-dimensional subspace $E$, where $q$ is the H\"older conjugate of $p$. We conjecture that the inequality is sharp when the subspace $E$ is a coordinate subspace. We fully establish this inequality along with equality conditions in the case $p =2$. For general $p$, we prove it in the case $n=m-1$, $n=1$, and discuss several particular cases, including an averaged version and a local version of the inequality. We then turn to the setting of convex bodies having a center of symmetry. Rogers and Shephard also proved a sharp version of their inequality for bodies in this class. We conjecture a similar bound for the $L_p$-summation, and we establish our conjecture for the particular case of asymmetric $L_1$-zonoids, which, in particular, proves our conjecture in the planar case.