The sharp one-dimensional convex sub-Gaussian comparison constant
Abstract
Let be an integrable real random variable with mean zero and two-sided sub-Gaussian tail for all . We determine the smallest constant such that is dominated in convex order by , where is standard normal. Equivalently, is the sharp one-dimensional convex sub-Gaussian comparison constant appearing in the \emph{Optimization Constants in Mathematics} repository~\cite{optimization-constants-repo}. We show that is given by an explicit system of one-dimensional equations and is attained by an extremal distribution that saturates the tail constraint. Numerically, (so ). We also determine the analogous sharp constant under a two-sided sub-exponential tail bound, with convex domination by a scaled Laplace law. Finally, we record two higher-dimensional consequences: a sequential tensorization principle for multivariate convex domination, and a dimension-free Gaussian comparator for the cone generated by convex ridge functions (the linear convex order).
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2604.03170,
title = {The sharp one-dimensional convex sub-Gaussian comparison constant},
author = {Damek Davis and Sam Power},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2604.03170},
year = {2026}
}