Random conical tessellations (Q312153)

Let \(S^{d-1}\) be the unit sphere of Euclidean space \(\mathbb R^d\). The spherically convex polytopes in \(S^{d-1}\) are in one-to-one correspondence with their positive hulls, which are convex polyhedral cones in \(\mathbb R^d\). The paper is devoted to random polytopes in \(S^{d-1}\). For a spherical polytope \(P\) contained in an open hemisphere, the \(j\)-quermassintegral \(U_j(P)\) is, up to a normalizing factor, the total invariant measure of the set of \((n-j)\)-flats through the origin that meet \(P\). Then, \(Y_{k,j}(P)\) is the sum of \(U_j(F)\) over all \((k-1)\)-faces \(F\) of \(P\) (or correspondingly for polyhedral cones). These general functionals comprise combinatorial functionals, such as numbers of \(k\)-faces, as well as metric functionals, such as total \(k\)-face contents, and they allow to express the \(k\)th conical intrinsic volumes. More recently, the conical intrinsic volumes have found very interesting applications in convex optimizations and compressed sensing, see [\textit{D. Amelunxen} and \textit{P. Bürgisser}, Math. Program. 149, No. 1--2 (A), 105--130 (2015; Zbl 1311.90092)]. The major part of the paper is devoted to the functionals \(\Lambda_k= Y_{k, k-1}\) of a polyhedral cone. The main result is the determination of the complete covariance structure of the random vector whose components are the \(k\)-face contents of the induced spherical random polytopes. The paper is organized as follows: Section 2 considers the geometric functionals of polyhedral cones. In Section 3 the two types of random cones for which first and second moments of these functionals are investigated. Expectation results for the functionals \(Y_{k,j}\) are derived in Section 4. Sections 5, 6 and 7 are then preparatory to the main result on mixed second moments, which is finally obtained in Section 8. Hints to the proof strategy are given at the beginning of Sections 6 and 8.