Curvature measures and soap bubbles beyond convexity

TL;DR

This paper characterizes isoperimetric sets in uniformly convex smooth normed spaces using curvature measures, extending classical results to non-smooth, non-convex sets, and introduces new geometric and measure-theoretic tools.

Contribution

It provides the first characterization of isoperimetric sets as unions of Wulff shapes in non-smooth, non-convex settings based on curvature measures.

Findings

Finite unions of Wulff shapes are the only sets with proportional curvature measures.

Extension of the Steiner--Weyl tube formula to arbitrary closed sets in convex normed spaces.

New results on the derivative of the localized volume function.

Abstract

Extending the celebrated results of Alexandrov (1958) and Korevaar-Ros (1988) for smooth sets, as well as the results of Schneider (1979) and the first author (1999) for arbitrary convex bodies, we obtain for the first time the characterization of the isoperimetric sets of a uniformly convex smooth finite-dimensional normed space (i.e. Wulff shapes) in the non-smooth and non-convex setting, based on the natural geometric condition involving the curvature measures. More specifically we show, under a natural mean-convexity assumption, that finite unions of disjoint Wulff shapes are the only sets of positive reach $ A \subseteq \mathbf{R}^{n+1} $ with finite and positive volume such that, for some $ k \in \{0, \ldots , n-1\}$, the $ k $-th generalized curvature measure $ \Theta^\phi_{k}(A, \cdot) $, which is defined on the unit normal bundle of $ A $ with respect to the relative geometry induced by $ \phi $, is proportional to $ \Theta^\phi_{n}(A, \cdot)$. If $ k = n-1 $ the conclusion holds for all sets of positive reach with finite and positive volume. We also prove a related sharp result about the removability of the singularities. This result is based on the extension of the notion of a normal boundary point, originally introduced by Busemann and Feller (1936) for arbitrary convex bodies, to sets of positive reach. These results are new even in the Euclidean space. Several auxiliary and related results are also proved, which are of independent interest. They include the extension of the classical Steiner--Weyl tube formula to arbitrary closed sets in a finite dimensional uniformly convex normed vector space and a general formula for the derivative of the localized volume function, which extends and complements recent results of Chambolle--Lussardi--Villa (2021).