Analytic content and the isoperimetric inequality in higher dimensions (Q1671379)

The authors prove a conjecture of Gustafsson and Khavinson, which relates the analytic content of a smoothly bounded domain in \(\mathbb{R}^N\) to the isoperimetric inequality. More precisely, \textit{B. Gustafsson} and \textit{D. Khavinson} have proved in [Houston J. Math. 20, No. 1, 75--92 (1994; Zbl 0805.31005)] that if \(\Omega\) is a bounded domain in \(\mathbb{R}^N\), \(N \geq 3\), with volume \(V\) and such that \(\partial \Omega\) is the disjoint union of finitely many smooth components with total surface area \(P\), and if \(r_\Omega>0\) is the radius of the ball having the same volume of \(\Omega\), then there exists a constant \(c_N>1\) such that \[ \frac{NV}{P}\leq \lambda(\Omega)\leq c_N r_\Omega\, , \] where \[ \lambda(\Omega)\equiv \inf \{\sup_{\overline{\Omega}}\|x-f\|: f \in A(\Omega)\}\, , \] with \(A(\Omega)\) denoting the space of harmonic vector fields. Gustafsson and Khavinson conjectured that in the inequality above the constant \(c_N\) can actually be replaced by \(1\). In the present paper, the authors show the validity of this conjecture by exploiting a combination of partial balayage and optimal transport theory.