English

The minimal volume of simplices containing a convex body

Metric Geometry 2019-07-18 v2 Functional Analysis

Abstract

Let KRnK \subset \mathbb R^n be a convex body with barycenter at the origin. We show there is a simplex SKS \subset K having also barycenter at the origin such that (vol(S)vol(K))1/ncn,\left(\frac{vol(S)}{vol(K)}\right)^{1/n} \geq \frac{c}{\sqrt{n}}, where c>0c>0 is an absolute constant. This is achieved using stochastic geometric techniques. Precisely, if KK is in isotropic position, we present a method to find centered simplices verifying the above bound that works with very high probability. As a consequence, we provide correct asymptotic estimates on an old problem in convex geometry. Namely, we show that the simplex Smin(K)S_{min}(K) of minimal volume enclosing a given convex body KRnK \subset \mathbb R^n, fulfills the following inequality (vol(Smin(K))vol(K))1/ndn,\left(\frac{vol(S_{min}(K))}{vol(K)}\right)^{1/n} \leq d \sqrt{n}, for some absolute constant d>0d>0. Up to the constant, the estimate cannot be lessened.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1707.03246,
  title  = {The minimal volume of simplices containing a convex body},
  author = {Daniel Galicer and Mariano Merzbacher and Damián Pinasco},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1707.03246},
  year   = {2019}
}

Comments

Some minor drafting errors were fixed