The Brunn-Minkowski inequality and nonconvex sets (Q1376575)

The author aims at improving the Brunn-Minkowski inequality for nonconvex sets, by introducing the convex hull of one of the sets into the estimate. For a Borel set \(B\) in \(\mathbb{R}^d\), define \[ \xi(a): =\inf\bigl\{\mu (A+B):A \text{ Borel set, } \mu(A)=a \bigr\}, \] where \(\mu\) denotes Lebesgue measure, and let \(\mu(B)=b\), \(\mu(\text{conv} B) =v\). It is proved that \[ \xi(a)^{1/d} \geq a^{1/d} +v^{1/d} \bigl(1-c (v/b)^{1/2} (v/a)^{1/(2d)}), \] where \(c\) is a constant depending on \(d\). This improves the Brunn-Minkowski inequality \(\xi(a)^{1/d} \geq a^{1/d} +b^{1/d}\) if \(v>b\) and \(a\) is sufficiently large. Asymptotically, the estimate is best possible, because it follows that \[ \lim_{a\to \infty} \xi(a)^{1/d}-a^{1/d} =\mu (\text{conv} B)^{1/d}. \]