Flag numbers and floating bodies (Q1789503)

This paper studies an extension of floating bodies for convex polytopes. Let \(P\) be an \(n\)-polytope in \({\mathbb R}^n\). For continuous functions \(\varphi,\psi:P \to(0,\infty)\), let \(\Phi,\Psi\) denote the measure with density \(\varphi\), respectively \(\psi\), with respect to Lebesgue measure on \({\mathbb R}^n\). The \(\varphi\)-weighted floating body of \(P\) for sufficiently small \(\delta>0\) is defined by \[ P_\delta^\varphi =\bigcap\{H^-:\Phi(P\cap H^+)\leq \delta\}, \] where the intersection is over hyperplanes \(H\), and \(H^-,H^+\) are the closed halfspaces bounded by \(H\). The main result of the paper says that \[ \lim_{\delta\to 0^+} \frac{\Psi(P)-\Psi(P_\delta^\varphi)}{\delta\left(\ln \frac{1}{\delta}\right)^{n-1}} = \sum_{v\in\text{vert}\,P} \frac{\psi(v)}{\varphi(v)} \frac{|\text{flag}_v(P)|}{n!n^{n-1}}, \] where \(\text{vert}\,P\) is the set of vertices of \(P\) and \(|\text{flag}_v(P)|\) is the number of complete flags of \(P\) that have \(v\) as a vertex. For the proof, the authors introduce so-called flag simplices and then restate parts of the older proof [\textit{C. Schütt}, Isr. J. Math. 73, No. 1, 65--77 (1991; Zbl 0745.52006)] for the case \(\varphi\equiv\psi\equiv 1\) in terms of flag simplices, showing that the volume of \(P\setminus P_\delta\) is asymptotically concentrated in the union of the flag simplices. This is then extended to a proof of the main result. Finally, the main result is applied to spherical and hyperbolic polytopes.