Quantitative combinatorial geometry for concave functions (Q2037171)

Two of the most well-known results in Combinatorial Geometry are Helly's theorem and Tverberg's theorem. The first one states that given a finite family of convex sets in \({\mathbb R}^d\), if every \(d+1\) or fewer sets have non-empty intersection, then the whole family has the same property; Tverberg's theorem says that given \((r-1)(d+1)+1\) points in \({\mathbb R}^d\), there exists a partition of them into \(r\) parts whose convex hulls intersect. The so-called quantitative versions of these theorems are generalizations of them that give conditions which guarantee somehow that the intersection of a family of convex sets in \({\mathbb R}^d\) is large. In this paper the authors obtain new exact quantitative Helly's and Tverberg's theorems for continuous functions, imposing conditions on the sets that witness the desired property. Examples of these properties are ``containing ellipsoids of large volume'' or ``containing zonotopes of large Gaussian measure''. An appealing sample of this kind of results is the following quantitative Tverberg theorem for the volume: Let \(r,d\in{\mathbb N}\) and let \(\mathcal{F}\) be a family of \((r-1)\bigl(d(d+3)/2+1\bigr)+1\) sets of volume one in \({\mathbb R}^d\). Then, there exists a partition of \(\mathcal{F}\) into \(r\) parts \(\mathcal{A}_1,\dots,\mathcal{A}_r\) such that the volume of the intersection \(\bigcap_{j=1}^r\mathrm{conv}\bigl(\bigcup_j\mathcal{A}_j\bigr)\) is, at least, \(d^{-d}\). Many of these theorems extend to colorful versions.