We show that the two-dimensional minimum-volume central section of the $n$-dimensional cross-polytope is attained by the regular $2n$-gon. We establish stability-type results for hyperplane sections of $ell_p$-balls in all the cases where the extremi
sers are known. Our methods are mainly probabilistic, exploring connections between negative moments of projections of random vectors uniformly distributed on convex bodies and volume of their sections.
We provide a generalisation of Pinelis Rademacher-Gaussian tail comparison to complex coefficients. We also establish uniform bounds on the probability that the magnitude of weighted sums of independent random vectors uniform on Euclidean spheres with matrix coefficients exceeds its second moment.
We provide a sharp lower bound on the $p$-norm of a sum of independent uniform random variables in terms of its variance when $0 < p < 1$. We address an analogous question for $p$-Renyi entropy for $p$ in the same range.
We establish a sharp moment comparison inequality between an arbitrary negative moment and the second moment for sums of independent uniform random variables, which extends Balls cube slicing inequality.
A question related to some conjectures of Lutwak about the affine quermassintegrals of a convex body $K$ in ${mathbb R}^n$ asks whether for every convex body $K$ in ${mathbb R}^n$ and all $1leqslant kleqslant n$ $$Phi_{[k]}(K):={rm vol}_n(K)^{-frac{1
}{n}}left (int_{G_{n,k}}{rm vol}_k(P_F(K))^{-n},d u_{n,k}(F)right )^{-frac{1}{kn}}leqslant csqrt{n/k},$$ where $c>0$ is an absolute constant. We provide an affirmative answer for some broad classes of random polytopes. We also discuss upper bounds for $Phi_{[k]}(K)$ when $K=B_1^n$, the unit ball of $ell_1^n$, and explain how this special instance has implications for the case of a general unconditional convex body $K$.
Let $C$ and $K$ be centrally symmetric convex bodies of volume $1$ in ${mathbb R}^n$. We provide upper bounds for the multi-integral expression begin{equation*}|{bf t}|_{C^s,K}=int_{C}cdotsint_{C}Big|sum_{j=1}^st_jx_jBig|_K,dx_1cdots dx_send{equation
*} in the case where $C$ is isotropic. Our approach provides an alternative proof of the sharp lower bound, due to Gluskin and V. Milman, for this quantity. We also present some applications to randomized vector balancing problems.
Our starting point is an improved version of a result of D. Hajela related to a question of Koml{o}s: we show that if $f(n)$ is a function such that $limlimits_{ntoinfty }f(n)=infty $ and $f(n)=o(n)$, there exists $n_0=n_0(f)$ such that for every $ng
eqslant n_0$ and any $Ssubseteq {-1,1}^n$ with cardinality $|S|leqslant 2^{n/f(n)}$ one can find orthonormal vectors $x_1,ldots ,x_nin {mathbb R}^n$ that satisfy $$|epsilon_1x_1+cdots +epsilon_nx_n|_{infty }geqslant csqrt{log f(n)}$$ for all $(epsilon_1,ldots ,epsilon_n)in S$. We obtain analogous results in the case where $x_1,ldots ,x_n$ are independent random points uniformly distributed in the Euclidean unit ball $B_2^n$ or any symmetric convex body, and the $ell_{infty }^n$-norm is replaced by an arbitrary norm on ${mathbb R}^n$.
Let $X_1,ldots,X_N$, $N>n$, be independent random points in $mathbb{R}^n$, distributed according to the so-called beta or beta-prime distribution, respectively. We establish threshold phenomena for the volume, intrinsic volumes, or more general measu
res of the convex hulls of these random point sets, as the space dimension $n$ tends to infinity. The dual setting of polytopes generated by random halfspaces is also investigated.
We present an alternative approach to some results of Koldobsky on measures of sections of symmetric convex bodies, which allows us to extend them to the not necessarily symmetric setting. We prove that if $K$ is a convex body in ${mathbb R}^n$ with
$0in {rm int}(K)$ and if $mu $ is a measure on ${mathbb R}^n$ with a locally integrable non-negative density $g$ on ${mathbb R}^n$, then begin{equation*}mu (K)leq left (csqrt{n-k}right )^kmax_{Fin G_{n,n-k}}mu (Kcap F)cdot |K|^{frac{k}{n}}end{equation*} for every $1leq kleq n-1$. Also, if $mu $ is even and log-concave, and if $K$ is a symmetric convex body in ${mathbb R}^n$ and $D$ is a compact subset of ${mathbb R}^n$ such that $mu (Kcap F)leq mu (Dcap F)$ for all $Fin G_{n,n-k}$, then begin{equation*}mu (K)leq left (ckL_{n-k}right )^{k}mu (D),end{equation*} where $L_s$ is the maximal isotropic constant of a convex body in ${mathbb R}^s$. Our method employs a generalized Blaschke-Petkantschin formula and estimates for the dual affine quermassintegrals.
We prove that there exists an absolute constant $alpha >1$ with the following property: if $K$ is a convex body in ${mathbb R}^n$ whose center of mass is at the origin, then a random subset $Xsubset K$ of cardinality ${rm card}(X)=lceilalpha nrceil $
satisfies with probability greater than $1-e^{-n}$ {Ksubseteq c_1n,{mathrm conv}(X),} where $c_1>0$ is an absolute constant. As an application we show that the vertex index of any convex body $K$ in ${mathbb R}^n$ is bounded by $c_2n^2$, where $c_2>0$ is an absolute constant, thus extending an estimate of Bezdek and Litvak for the symmetric case.
