Extremal areas of polygons with fixed perimeter (Q2202705): Difference between revisions

The authors address the classical isoperimetric problem elaborated in the context of Morse theory on a suitable configuration space. Let \(\mathcal C_n \) be the configuration space, that is the set of all \(n\)-polygons with perimeter equal to one. The main result states that the configuration space is diffeomorphic to the projective space \(\mathbb C P^{n-2}\). Moreover, they prove various properties of the (oriented) area functional: among others, that the smooth critical points are only some kinds of stars, that the number of critical points is minimal (that is \(n-1\)) and that, under the nondegeneracy assumption, the Morse index can be computed in terms of the winding number. The proofs use tools of critical point theory and Sylvester's formula for the index of symmetric matrices.