On the stability of the Lp-curvature

Abstract

It is known that the Lp-curvature of a smooth, strictly convex body in Rn is constant only for origin-centered balls when 1≠p>−n, and only for balls when p=1. If p=−n, then the L−n-curvature is constant only for origin-symmetric ellipsoids. We prove ‘local’ and ‘global’ stability versions of these results. For p≥1, we prove a global stability result: if the Lp-curvature is almost a constant, then the volume symmetric difference of K˜ and a translate of the unit ball B is almost zero. Here K˜ is the dilation of K with the same volume as the unit ball. For 0≤p<1, we prove a similar result in the class of origin-symmetric bodies in the L2-distance. In addition, for −n<p<0, we prove a local stability result: There is a neighborhood of the unit ball that any smooth, strictly convex body in this neighborhood with ‘almost’ constant Lp-curvature is ‘almost’ the unit ball. For p=−n, we prove a global stability result in R2 and a local stability result for n>2 in the Banach-Mazur distance.