English

The Hermite-Hadamard inequality in higher dimensions

Classical Analysis and ODEs 2018-11-15 v2 Functional Analysis

Abstract

The Hermite-Hadamard inequality states that the average value of a convex function on an interval is bounded from above by the average value of the function at the endpoints of the interval. We provide a generalization to higher dimensions: let ΩRn\Omega \subset \mathbb{R}^n be a convex domain and let f:ΩRf:\Omega \rightarrow \mathbb{R} be a convex function satisfying fΩ0f \big|_{\partial \Omega} \geq 0, then 1ΩΩf dHn2π1/2nn+1ΩΩf dHn1. \frac{1}{|\Omega|} \int_{\Omega}{f ~d \mathcal{H}^n} \leq \frac{2 \pi^{-1/2} n^{n+1}}{|\partial \Omega|} \int_{\partial \Omega}{f~d \mathcal{H}^{n-1}}. The constant 2π1/2nn+12 \pi^{-1/2} n^{n+1} is presumably far from optimal, however, it cannot be replaced by 1 in general. We prove slightly stronger estimates for the constant in two dimensions where we show that 9/8c289/8 \leq c_2 \leq 8. We also show, for some universal constant c>0c>0, if ΩR2\Omega \subset \mathbb{R}^2 is simply connected with smooth boundary, f:ΩRf:\Omega \rightarrow \mathbb{R}_{} is subharmonic, i.e. Δf0\Delta f \geq 0, and fΩ0f \big|_{\partial \Omega} \geq 0, then Ωf dH2c\mboxinradius(Ω)Ωf dH1. \int_{\Omega}{f~ d \mathcal{H}^2} \leq c \cdot \mbox{inradius}(\Omega) \int_{\partial \Omega}{ f ~d\mathcal{H}^{1}}. We also prove that every domain ΩRn\Omega \subset \mathbb{R}^n whose boundary is 'flat' at a certain scale δ\delta admits a Hermite-Hadamard inequality for all subharmonic functions with a constant depending only on the dimension, the measure Ω|\Omega| and the scale δ\delta.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1808.07794,
  title  = {The Hermite-Hadamard inequality in higher dimensions},
  author = {Stefan Steinerberger},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1808.07794},
  year   = {2018}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-23T03:42:03.978Z