Minkowski valuations on convex functions (Q1688762)

A function \(Z\) defined on some subspace \(\mathcal{S}\) of a lattice \((\mathcal{L},\vee,\wedge)\) and taking values in an abelian semigroup is called a valuation if \(Z(f\vee g)+Z(f\wedge g)=Z(f)+Z(g)\) whenever \(f,g,f\vee g,f\wedge g\in\mathcal{S}\). When the semigroup is the space of convex bodies endowed with the Minkowski sum, the valuation is called Minkowski valuation. The authors study valuations defined on the space of convex functions and taking values either in the space of convex bodies or in the space of finite even Borel measures on the unit sphere \(S^{n-1}\). The (extensions of the) projection body operator and the LYZ measures are characterized. The function space \(\mathrm{Conv}(\mathbb{R}^n)\) denotes the space of convex functions \(u:\mathbb{R}^n\to(-\infty,+\infty]\) which are proper (i.e., not identically \(+\infty\)), lower semicontinuous and coercive (i.e., \(\lim_{|x|\to+\infty}u(x)=+\infty\), with \(|x|\) the Euclidean norm of \(x\)). For this space, \(\vee\) will be the pointwise maximum and \(\wedge\) the pointwise minimum. The notion of the projection body as an operator defined on the Sobolev space \(W^{1,1}(\mathbb{R}^n)\) is extended to functions \(\zeta\circ u\) with \(u\in\mathrm{Conv}(\mathbb{R}^n)\) and \(\zeta\geq 0\) a sufficiently rapidly decreasing function. For that, the notion of the LYZ measure associated to a function on \(W^{1,1}(\mathbb{R}^n)\) is first extended to \(\mathrm{Conv}(\mathbb{R}^n)\). Then, the extension of the projection body operator is obtained by taking the cosine transform of the extended LYZ measure. The authors characterize the extension of the projection body operator as a continuous, monotone, \(\mathrm{SL}(n)\) contravariant and translation invariant Minkowski valuation defined on the space of convex functions. The LYZ measure is characterized as a weakly continuous, monotone valuation that is \(\mathrm{SL}(n)\) contravariant of degree 1 and translation invariant. For the \(\mathrm{SL}(n)\) covariant case, they obtain a classification result for the continuous, monotone, Minkowski valuations defined on the space of convex functions. In this case, the difference body of the defined level set body is characterized.