Bregman distances and Klee sets (Q1028402)

The authors extend the known ``farthest-point-assertion'' which points out that each Klee set in an Euclidean space (i.e. each nonempty bounded closed set \(C\subset\mathbb{R}^n\) for which each point \(y\in\mathbb{R}^n\) has an unique farthest point \(x\) in \(C\)) is singleton. In the paper, the Euclidean distance is replaced by so-called ``Bregman distances'' which are induced by smooth strictly convex functions \(f:\mathbb{R}^n\to\mathbb{R}\) (with \(C\subset\text{int\,dom}\, f\)) according to \[ D_f(x, y)= \begin{cases} f(x)- f(y)-\langle\nabla f(y), x-y\rangle, &\text{if }x,y\in \operatorname{dom}f,\\ +\infty, &\text{else}.\end{cases} \] Clearly, if \(f(x)= {1\over 2}\| x\|^2\) then it is \(D_f(x, y)={1\over 2}\| x-y\|^2\). In general, however, \(D_f(\cdot,\cdot)\) is not a distance function by definition since it is neither symmetric nor does the triangle inequality hold. The authors show that also Klee sets with respect of Bregman distances are singleton. They provide two proofs: the first proof bases on special results from monotone operator theory, the second proof uses generalized subdifferentials from nonsmooth analysis.