Quadratic Crofton and sets that see themselves as little as possible
Abstract
Let and let be a one-dimensional set with finite length . We are interested in minimizers of an energy functional that measures the size of a set projected onto itself in all directions: we are thus asking for sets that see themselves as little as possible (suitably interpreted). Obvious minimizers of the functional are subsets of a straight line but this is only possible for . The problem has an equivalent formulation: the expected number of intersections between a random line and depends only on the length of (Crofton's formula). We are interested in sets that minimize the variance of the expected number of intersections. We solve the problem for convex and slightly less than half of all values of : there, a minimizing set is the union of copies of the boundary and a line segment.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2211.03259,
title = {Quadratic Crofton and sets that see themselves as little as possible},
author = {Stefan Steinerberger},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2211.03259},
year = {2023}
}