Intrinsic volumes of $\ell_p$-balls and a continuum of Maxwell--Poincar\'e--Borel laws for their curvature measures

TL;DR

This paper derives explicit formulas for the intrinsic volumes and curvature measures of alls in high dimensions, revealing new limit theorems for the distribution of boundary points and their asymptotic behavior.

Contribution

It provides explicit integral formulas for intrinsic volumes of alls and their analogues, along with a Maxwell--PoincarE9--Borel limit theorem for curvature measures in high dimensions.

Findings

Explicit formulas involve a special function _p.

Asymptotic formulas for high-dimensional intrinsic volumes.

Weak convergence of boundary point distributions to explicit measures.

Abstract

For $p>1$, we derive explicit formulas for the intrinsic volumes $V_0(\mathbb B_p^n),\dots,V_{n-1}(\mathbb B_p^n)$ of the $n$-dimensional $\ell_p$-balls $$ \mathbb B_p^n = \{x\in\mathbb R^n:\ |x_1|^p+\ldots+|x_n|^p\le 1\} $$ and, more generally, of their coordinate-weighted analogues. The formula is given in terms of a one-dimensional integral involving the special function $$ \mathcal F_p(t;\nu) = \int_{\mathbb R}|u|^\nu e^{-|u|^p-t|u|^{2p-2}}\,du. $$ Previously known formulas for the intrinsic volumes of ellipsoids, weighted crosspolytopes, and rectangular boxes arise as special or limiting cases. We also obtain asymptotic formulas for $V_{j(n)}(\mathbb B_p^n)$ in the high-dimensional regime $n\to\infty$, where the index $j(n)$ is allowed to depend on $n$. We further investigate the curvature measures of $\mathbb B_p^n$. These are finite measures $$ \Phi_0(\mathbb B_p^n,\cdot),\dots,\Phi_{n-1}(\mathbb B_p^n,\cdot) $$ on $\partial\mathbb B_p^n$ that localize the intrinsic volumes. We prove a Maxwell--Poincar\'{e}--Borel type limit theorem: if $X_n$ is a random boundary point of $\mathbb B_p^n$ distributed according to the normalized curvature measure $\Phi_{j(n)}(\mathbb B_p^n,\cdot)/V_{j(n)}(\mathbb B_p^n)$, where $j(n)/n\to\alpha\in[0,1]$ as $n\to\infty$, then for every fixed $r\in\mathbb N$, the joint distribution of the first $r$ coordinates of $n^{1/p}X_n$ converges weakly to the product measure $\nu_{p,\alpha}^{\otimes r}$. Here $\nu_{p,\alpha}$ is an explicit probability measure on $\mathbb R$ depending on $p>1$ and $\alpha\in[0,1]$. The main tool underlying these results is an explicit characterization of the curvature measures of coordinate-weighted $\ell_p$-balls, and in particular an explicit formula for their mixed moments.