Stability properties of Cauchy's surface area formula (Q1181772)

Cauchy's surface area formula expresses the surface area of a \(d\)- dimensional convex body in terms of the mean value of the volume of its orthogonal projections onto \((d-1)\)-dimensional linear subspaces. The present article concerns itself with averages of the same kind as those in Cauchy's formula but with respect to some direction dependent density function and, in particular, with the stability problem whether the density must be close to 1 if the formula produces approximately the correct surface area. Various examples are constructed to demonstrate that this relationship between surface area and density is, in general, unstable. On the other hand it is shown that if the density function satisfies suitable regularity conditions, then explicit stability estimates can be obtained.