Research

# Polar duals of convex and star bodies

Chang-Jian Zhao1*, Lian-Ying Chen1 and Wing-Sum Cheung2

Author Affiliations

1 Department of Mathematics, China Jiliang University, Hangzhou 310018, China

2 Department of Mathematics, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam Road, Hong Kong

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Journal of Inequalities and Applications 2012, 2012:90 doi:10.1186/1029-242X-2012-90

The electronic version of this article is the complete one and can be found online at: http://www.journalofinequalitiesandapplications.com/content/2012/1/90

 Received: 17 December 2011 Accepted: 17 April 2012 Published: 17 April 2012

© 2012 Zhao et al; licensee Springer.

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

### Abstract

In this article, some new inequalities about polar duals of convex and star bodies are established. The new inequalities in special case yield some of the recent results.

MR (2000) Subject Classification: 52A30.

##### Keywords:
polar dual; Lp-mixed volume; dual Lp-mixed volume; the Bourgain and Milman's inequality

### 1 Notations and preliminaries

The setting for this article is n-dimensional Euclidean space . Let denotes the set of convex bodies (compact, convex subsets with non-empty interiors) in . We reserve the letter u for unit vectors, and the letter B for the unit ball centered at the origin. The surface of B is Sn-l. The volume of the unit n-ball is denoted by ωn.

We use V(K) for the n-dimensional volume of convex body K. , denotes the support function of ; i.e., for u ∈ Sn-l

(1.1)

where u · x denotes the usual inner product u and x in .

Let δ denotes the Hausdorff metric on , i.e., for , where | · |denotes the sup-norm on the space of continuous functions C(Sn-l).

Associated with a compact subset K of , which is star-shaped with respect to the origin, is its radial function , defined for u ∈ Sn-l, by

(1.2)

If ρ(K, ·) is positive and continuous, K will be called a star body. Let Sn denotes the set of star bodies in . Let denotes the radial Hausdorff metric, as follows, if K, L∈ Sn, then (See [1,2]).

#### 1.1 Lp-mixed volume and dual Lp-mixed volume

If , the Lp-mixed volume Vp(K, L) was defined by Lutwak (see [3]):

(1.3)

where Sp(K, ·) denotes a positive Borel measure on Sn-1.

The Lp analog of the classical Minkowski inequality (see [3]) states that: If K and L are convex bodies, then

(1.4)

with equality if and only if K and L are homothetic.

If K, L Sn, p ≥ 1, the Lp-dual mixed volume was defined by Lutwak (see [4]):

(1.5)

where dS(u) signifies the surface area element on Sn-1 at u.

The following dual Lp-Minkowski inequality was obtained in [2]: If K and L are star bodies, then

(1.6)

with equality if and only if K and L are dilates.

#### 1.2 Mixed bodies of convex bodies

If , the notation of mixed body [K1,..., Kn-1] states that (see [5]): corresponding to the convex bodies in , there exists a convex body, unique up to translation, which we denote by[K1,..., Kn-1].

The following is a list of the properties of mixed body: It is symmetric, linear with respect to Minkowski linear combinations, positively homogeneous, and for and λi> 0,

(1) V1([K1, ..., Kn-1], Kn) = V(K1, ..., Kn-1, Kn);

(2) [K1 + L1, K2, ..., Kn-1] = [K1, K2, ..., Kn-1] + [L1, K2, ..., Kn-1];

(3) [λ 1 K 1, ..., λn-1Kn-1] = λ1... λn-1 · [K1, ..., Kn-1];

(4) .

The properties of mixed body play an important role in proving our main results.

#### 1.3 Polar of convex body

For , the polar body of K, K* is defined:

It is easy to get that

(1.7)

Bourgain and Milman's inequality is stated as follows (see [6]).

If K is a convex symmetric body in , then there exists a universal constant c> 0 such that

(1.8)

Different proofs were given by Pisier [7].

### 2 Main results

In this article, we establish some new inequalities on polar duals of convex and star bodies.

Theorem 2.1 If K, K1, ..., Kn-1 are convex bodies in and let L = [K1, ..., Kn-1], then the Lp-mixed volumes Vp(K, L), Vp(K*, L), Vp(B, L) satisfy

(2.1)

Proof From (1.1) and (1.2), it is easy

(2.2)

By definition of Lp-mixed volume, we have

(2.3)

and

(2.4)

Multiply both sides of (2.3) and (2.4), in view of (1.7) and (2.2) and using the Cauchy-Schwarz inequality (see [8]), we obtain

Taking p = n - 1 in (2.1) and in view of the property (1) of mixed body, we obtain the following result: If , then

(2.5)

This is just an inequality given by Ghandehari [9].

Let L = B, we have the following interesting result:

Let K be a convex body and K* its polar dual, then

(2.6)

Taking p = n-1 in (2.6), we have the following result which was given in [9]:

with equality if and only if K is an n-ball.

Corollary 2.2 The Lp-mixed volume of K and K*, Vp(K, K*) satisfies

(2.7)

Proof In view of the property (4) of the mixed body, we have

Form (1.4) and taking for K1 = K2 = ⋯ = Kn-1 = K in (2.1), we have

Taking p = n-1 in (2.7), we have the following result:

This is just an inequality given by Ghandehari [9]. The cases p = 1 and n = 2 give Steinhardt's and Firey's result (see [7]).

A reverse inequality about was given by Ghandehari [9].

Theorem 2.3 Let K be a star body in , K* be the polar dual of K, then there exist a universal constant c> 0 such that

(2.8)

where c is the constant of Bourgain and Milman's inequality.

Proof From (1.6) and (1.8), we have

The following theorem concerning Lp-dual mixed volumes will generalize Santaló inequality.

Theorem 2.4 Let K1 and K2 be two star bodies, and be the polar dual of K1 and K2, then there exists a constant c, Lp-dual mixed volumes and satisfy

(2.9)

Proof From (1.6), we have

(2.10)

For and , we also have

(2.11)

Multiply both sides of (2.10) and (2.11) and using Bourgain and Milman's inequality, we obtain

Taking for K1 = K2 = K in (2.9) and in view of , (2.9) changes to the Bourgain and Milman's inequality (1.8).

### Competing interests

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

### Authors' contributions

C-JZ, L-YC and W-SC jointly contributed to the main results Theorems 2.1, 2.3, and 2.4. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

### Acknowledgements

C.-J. Zhao research was supported by National Natural Sciences Foundation of China (10971205). W.-S. Cheung research was partially supported by a HKU URG grant.

### References

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9. Ghandehari, M: Polar duals of convex bodies. Proc Am Math Soc. 113(3), 799–808 (1991)