CAREER: Isoperimetric and Minkowski Problems in Convex Geometric Analysis

Syracuse University, Syracuse NY

Investigators

Abstract

Isoperimetric problems and Minkowski problems are two central ingredients in Convex Geometric Analysis. The former compares geometric measurements (such as volume and surface area) while the latter recovers the shape of geometric figures using local versions of these measurements. The two types of problems are inherently connected. This project will exploit this connection to seek answers to either isoperimetric problems or Minkowski problems in various settings when answers to one exist while answers to the other remain elusive. Although these problems originate from a geometric background, their applications extend beyond mathematics into engineering and design, including areas like antenna reflector design and urban planning. The principal investigator will organize a series of events and workshops at local science museums, community centers, and schools, involving high school teachers and students as well as undergraduate and graduate students. These events and workshops aim to expose the fun and exploratory side of the principal investigator’s research and mathematics in general to students early in their educational careers, raise society's awareness and interest in mathematics, and promote mathematics among historically underrepresented populations. The existence of solutions to the dual Minkowski problem (that characterizes dual curvature measures) in the original symmetric case has been largely settled (by the principal investigator and his collaborators) through techniques from geometry and analysis. This naturally leads to conjectures involving isoperimetric problems connected to the dual Minkowski problem. Such conjectured isoperimetric inequalities are also connected to an intriguing question behind many other conjectures in convexity: how does certain symmetry improve estimates? The principal investigator will also study Minkowski problems and isoperimetric inequalities coming from affine geometry. Special cases of these isoperimetric inequalities are connected to an affine version of the sharp fractional Sobolev inequalities of Almgren-Lieb. The techniques involved in studying these questions are from Convex Geometric Analysis and PDE. In the last few decades (particularly the last two), there has been a community-wide effort to extend results in the theory of convex bodies to their counterparts in the space of log-concave functions. In this project, the principal investigator will also continue his past work to extend dual curvature measures, their Minkowski problems, and associated isoperimetric inequality to the space of log-concave functions. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.