Characterization of Minkowski measurability in terms of surface area (Q1936210)

Let \(A\) be a bounded subset of \({\mathbb R}^d\), \(r>0\), \(d_{A}(z)\) stand for the distance of a point \(z\in {\mathbb R}^d\) from \(A\), and \(A_r :=\{ z\in {\mathbb R}^d : d_{A}\leq r\}\). The symbol \({\mathcal H}^t\) denotes the \(t\)-dimensional Hausdorff measure, and \(\kappa_t :=\pi^{t/2}/\Gamma(1+t/2)\). The values \(\lim \inf_{r\to 0}\frac{{\mathcal H}^d (A_r)}{\kappa_{d-s}r^{d-s}}\) and \(\lim \sup_{r\to 0}\frac{{\mathcal H}^d (A_r)}{\kappa_{d-s}r^{d-s}}\) are called \(s\)-dimensional lower and upper Minkowski contents of a compact set \(A\), and if these values coincide then their common value is its Minkowski content. Analogously, its lower and upper \(S\)-contents are equal to \(\lim \inf_{r\to 0}\frac{{\mathcal H}^{d-1} (\partial A_r)}{(d-s)\kappa_{d-s}r^{d-1-s}}\) and \(\lim \sup_{r\to 0}\frac{{\mathcal H}^{d-1} (\partial A_r)}{(d-s)\kappa_{d-s}r^{d-1-s}}\), and if these values coincide then their common value is its \(S\)-content. The authors are dealing with these two kinds of contents. For instance, they show that the existence of the Minkowski content (as positive finite number) is equivalent to the existence of the corresponding \(S\)-content, and that both these contents coincide in this case. Then, the relations between the Minkowski and \(S\)-contents are studied for more general gauge functions. Finally, the results are applied to simplify the proof of the Weyl-Berry conjecture in dimension one.