Conic intrinsic volumes of Weyl chambers (Q2172948)

A polyhedral cone in the Euclidean space \(\mathbb{R}^n\) is a set of solutions to a finite system of linear homogeneous inequalities. That is, a polyhedral cone \(C\subset\mathbb{R}^n\) can be represented as \(C = \{\beta\in \mathbb{R}^n: \langle \beta, x_i\rangle\le 0\text{ for all } i = 1,\dots,m\}\) for some finite collection of vectors \(x_1,\dots, x_m\in \mathbb{R}^n\), where \(\langle \cdot, \cdot \rangle\) denotes the Euclidean scalar product. The fundamental Weyl chambers of types \(A_{n-1}\), \(B_n\) and \(D_n\) are the polyhedral cones defined by \(C(A_{n - 1}) = \{\beta \in \mathbb{R}^n: \beta_1 \ge \beta_2 \ge\dots \ge \beta_n\}\), \(C(B_n) = \{\beta \in \mathbb{R}^n: \beta_1 \ge \beta_2 \ge\dots \ge \beta_n\ge 0\}\), \(C(D_n) = \{\beta \in \mathbb{R}^n: \beta_1 \ge \beta_2 \ge\dots \ge \beta_{n-1}\ge |\beta_n|\}\), where \(\beta = (\beta_1,\dots, \beta_n)\) is the coordinate representation of \(\beta\in \mathbb{R}^n\). In this paper, the authors are interested in the conic intrinsic volumes of the Weyl chambers. The conic intrinsic volumes of cones are analogues of the classical Euclidean intrinsic volumes of convex bodies in the setting of conic or spherical geometry. Let us define the conic intrinsic volumes, see [\textit{R. Schneider} and \textit{W. Weil}, Stochastic and integral geometry. Berlin: Springer (2008; Zbl 1175.60003), Section 6.5]. Given some point \(x\in \mathbb{R}^n\), the Euclidean projection \(\Pi_C(x)\) of \(x\) to a polyhedral cone \(C\subset \mathbb{R}^n\) is the unique vector \(y\in C\) minimizing the Euclidean distance \(\|x - y\|\). For \(k \in \{0,\dots, n\}\), the \(k\)-th conic intrinsic volume \(v_k(C)\) of \(C\) is defined as the probability that the Euclidean projection \(\Pi_C(g)\) onto \(C\) of an \(n\)-dimensional standard Gaussian random vector \(g\) lies in the relative interior of a \(k\)-dimensional face of \(C\) (meaning that the projection is contained in this face but not in any face of smaller dimension). The conic intrinsic volumes of the Weyl chambers are given by the following theorem. Theorem. For all \(n \in \{1, 2,\dots, \}\) and all \(k \in \{0,\dots, n\}\) we have \(v_k(C(A_{n - 1})) = \left[\begin{smallmatrix} n\\ k\end{smallmatrix}\right]{\frac{1}{n!}}\), \(v_k(C(B_k)) = {\frac{B[n, k]}{2^n\, n!}}\), \(v_k(C(D_n)) ={\frac{D[n, k]}{2^{n-1}\, n!}}\), where \(\left[\begin{smallmatrix} n\\ k\end{smallmatrix}\right]\) denote the Stirling numbers of the first kind, \(B[n, k]\) their \(B\)-analogues and \(D[n, k]\) their \(D\)-analogues defined as the coefficients of the following polynomials: \(t (t + 1) \cdot\ldots \cdot (t + n - 1) = \sum_{k=0}^n \left[\begin{smallmatrix} n\\ k\end{smallmatrix}\right]\, t^k\), \((t + 1)(t + 3) \cdot\ldots \cdot (t + 2n - 1) = \sum_{k=0}^n B[n, k]\, t^k\), \((t + 1)(t + 3) \cdot\ldots \cdot (t + 2n - 3)(t + n - 1) = \sum_{k=0}^n D[n, k]\, t^k\). The above mentioned theorem is known and appeared in various, seemingly unrelated forms. One of the approaches to prove it is to relate the conic intrinsic volumes to the coefficients of the characteristic polynomial of the hyperplane arrangement generating the Weyl chambers, see [\textit{R. Schneider}, St. Petersbg. Math. J. 29, No. 1, 209--221 (2018; Zbl 1386.52011)]. In the present paper, the authors give another proof of the Theorem. The starting point of this proof is a formula, expressing the conic intrinsic volumes of a polyhedral cone in terms of the internal and external angles of its faces.