Finitely additive functionals in the space of planes. I (Q1901437)

A flag in \(\mathbb{R}^3\) is a figure consisting of a point \(P\in \mathbb{R}^3\), a line \(\gamma\) through \(P\) and a plane through \(\gamma\). If we consider the families of flags depending on a line \(\gamma\), we obtain families which are homeomorphic to the product \(\gamma\times E_1 (\gamma)\), where \(E_1 (\gamma)\) is the circle of length \(\pi\) of the (planar) directions orthogonal to \(\gamma\). The simplest sets of this type are the so called wedges which have the product form \(w= \nu\times \lambda\), where \(\nu\subset \gamma\) is an open interval and \(\lambda\subset E_1 (\gamma)\) is an open arc. In combinatorial integral geometry the idea of finitely additive functionals \(\Psi\) depending on a function \(F\) defined in the space of wedges arises from results on the measure in the space \(E\) of planes in \(\mathbb{R}^3\): in this context wedge functions depend on the measure defined in \(E\) and the corresponding functionals serve to calculate values of this measure on subsets of \(E\). In this paper, the authors tackle the following problem: given a wedge function, what are the conditions so that it determines a signed measure on \(E\)? The main result of the paper is a theorem that gives necessary and sufficient conditions which guarantee that a given functional \(\Psi\) generates a locally finite signed measure in \(E\). In particular, the author considers wedge functions generated by ``flag densities'', i.e. functions which are integrals on the wedge of continuous functions defined in the space of flags. Then, under an additional smoothness hypothesis, the conditions are formulated by using combinations of the values of \(F\) depending on a pyramid (pyramidal excess). More precisely, if this pyramidal excess has infinitesimal order greater than \(h^2\) (where \(h\) is the height of the pyramid) on sequences of flattening pyramids, then \(\Psi\) generates a signed measure in \(E\); moreover this measure is nonnegative if the pyramidal excess is nonnegative. The authors also present some analytical consequences of such conditions. They show by means of a ``first-order analysis'' that the flag densities have the form of a sinusoid and derive a differential equation for their parameters. They leave the complete solution of the problem (``second-order analysis'') to a successive paper.