English

On a conjectural symmetric version of Ehrhard's inequality

Metric Geometry 2022-02-08 v3 Analysis of PDEs Differential Geometry Probability

Abstract

We formulate a plausible conjecture for the optimal Ehrhard-type inequality for convex symmetric sets with respect to the Gaussian measure. Namely, letting Jk1(s)=0stk1et22dtJ_{k-1}(s)=\int^s_0 t^{k-1} e^{-\frac{t^2}{2}}dt and ck1=Jk1(+)c_{k-1}=J_{k-1}(+\infty), we conjecture that the function F:[0,1]R,F:[0,1]\rightarrow\mathbb{R}, given by F(a)=k=1n1aEk(βkJk11(ck1a)+αk)F(a)= \sum_{k=1}^n 1_{a\in E_k}\cdot(\beta_k J_{k-1}^{-1}(c_{k-1} a)+\alpha_k) (with an appropriate choice of a decomposition [0,1]=iEi[0,1]=\cup_{i} E_i and coefficients αi,βi\alpha_i, \beta_i) satisfies, for all symmetric convex sets KK and L,L, and any λ[0,1]\lambda\in[0,1], F(γ(λK+(1λ)L))λF(γ(K))+(1λ)F(γ(L)). F\left(\gamma(\lambda K+(1-\lambda)L)\right)\geq \lambda F\left(\gamma(K)\right)+(1-\lambda) F\left(\gamma(L)\right). We explain that this conjecture is "the most optimistic possible", and is equivalent to the fact that for any symmetric convex set K,K, its \emph{Gaussian concavity power} ps(K,γ)p^s(K,\gamma) is greater than or equal to ps(RB2k×Rnk,γ),p_s(RB^k_2\times \mathbb{R}^{n-k},\gamma), for some k{1,...,n}k\in \{1,...,n\}. We call the sets RB2k×RnkRB^k_2\times \mathbb{R}^{n-k} round kk-cylinders; they also appear as the conjectured Gaussian isoperimetric minimizers for symmetric sets, see Heilman \cite{Heilman}. In this manuscript, we make progress towards this question, and prove certain inequality for which the round k-cylinders are the only equality cases. As an auxiliary result on the way to the equality case characterization, we characterize the equality cases in the "convex set version" of the Brascamp-Lieb inequality, and moreover, obtain a quantitative stability version in the case of the standard Gaussian measure; this may be of independent interest.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2103.11433,
  title  = {On a conjectural symmetric version of Ehrhard's inequality},
  author = {Galyna V. Livshyts},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2103.11433},
  year   = {2022}
}

Comments

82 pages; part of the initial version of this paper became a separate paper, arxiv 3818518. Lemma 2.16 corrected

R2 v1 2026-06-24T00:23:55.102Z