Random Steiner symmetrizations of sets and functions (Q1942222)

Let \(\mathcal{L}^N\) be the \(N\)-dimensional Lebesgue measure and \(\mathcal{M}\) be the family of all measurable sets of the \(N\)-dimensional Euclidean space \({\mathbb R}^N\) having finite measure. Denote by \(B(x, \rho)\) the closed ball centered at \(x\) having radius \(\rho\). The unit sphere of \({\mathbb R}^N\), that is the set of all vectors such that their Euclidean norm equals one, is denoted by \(S^{N-1}\). The volume of the unit ball \(B(0, 1)\) of \({\mathbb R}^N\) is denoted by \(\alpha_N\). For any \(F\in{\mathcal M}\), let \(F^*=B(0, \rho(F))\) be the ball centered at the origin having the same volume. Here, \(\rho(F)=[{\mathcal L}^N(F)\, (\alpha_N)^{-1}]^{1/N}\). Let \(c(x)\) be the closed segment on \(l_u+x\) centered at \(x\in u^{\bot}\) whose length is equal to \({\mathcal L}^1(F\cap(l_u+x))\), where \(l_u\) is the line through the origin parallel to \(u\), while \(u^{\bot}\) is \((N-1)\)-dimensional subspace orthogonal to \(u\in S^{N-1}\). The union of all the line segments \(c(x)\) is called the Steiner symmetral of a measurable \(F\) and is denoted by \(S_uF\). The mapping \(S_u\) from the family of measurable sets into itself is called Steiner symmetrization. This paper is an independent attempt to clarify what is going on with random Steiner symmetrizations of measurable sets, integrable functions and continuous functions with compact support providing more geometric and direct proofs. The paper is organized as follows. Section 2 studies how Steiner symmetrizations influence the central moment of inertia of a measurable set. Section 3 recalls well-known properties of Steiner symmetrizations related to the Caccioppoli-De Giorgi perimeter and use the compactness criterion for Caccioppoli sets to prove the key result of the section which describes the action of Steiner symmetrizations on certain compact families of a measurable sets. Therefore, the random Steiner symmetrizations of a measurable set \(F\) having finite measure converge to \(F^*\) almost surely. Section 4 is devoted to random Steiner symmetrizations of positive functions, either belonging to \(L_p\) (\(p\in [1, +\infty)\)), or continuous functions with compact support. Section 5 give a proof of Mani-Levitska's conjecture.