A generalization of Ekeland's \(\varepsilon\)-variational principle and its Borwein-Preiss smooth variant (Q1577987)

The authors obtain a result which is a common generalization of the two basic variational principles due to \textit{I. Ekeland} [J. Math. Anal. Appl. 47, 324-353 (1974; Zbl 0286.49015)] and \textit{J. M. Borwein} and \textit{D. Preiss} [Trans. Am. Math. Soc. 303, 517-527 (1987; Zbl 0632.49008)]. The main idea of the authors is to replace the distance function (used in the Ekeland principle) or the \(p\)-th power of the distance function (used in the Borwein--Preiss principle) by a gauge-type lower semicontinuous function. The result so obtained offers also slight improvements for the classical principles by specialization. The method of the proof yields a simpler approach to the result of Borwein--Preiss as well. The new variational principle is then applied to investigate differentiability properties of convex functions in the presence of a so-called \(\beta\)-smooth bump function.