Continuous valuations on the space of Lipschitz functions on the sphere (Q2217519)

In the present article the authors study real-valued valuations on the space of all Lipschitz continuous maps on the unit sphere, \(f:S^{n-1}\to\mathbb{R}\), denoted by \(\text{Lip}(S^{n-1})\). Here, a map \(V:\text{Lip}(S^{n-1})\to\mathbb{R}\) is said to be a valuation if \[V(f\vee g) + V(f\wedge g) = V(f)+V(g)\] for every \(f,g\in \text{Lip}(S^{n-1})\), where \(f\vee g\) and \(f\wedge g\) denote the pointwise maximum and minimum of \(f\) and \(g\), respectively. The results of this paper are important steps towards a full classification of all such valuations which are in addition rotation invariant and continuous. Here, \(V:\text{Lip}(S^{n-1})\to\mathbb{R}\) is rotation invariant if \[V(f\circ \varphi)=V(f)\] for every \(f\in\text{Lip}(S^{n-1})\) and \(\varphi\in\mathbf{O}(n)\). Furthermore, continuity is understood with respect to \(\tau\)-convergence, which corresponds to Hausdorff convergence on the set of support functions of convex bodies (restricted to \(S^{n-1}\)). Note that while \(\text{Lip}(S^{n-1})\) is equipped with a standard norm, the set of all valuations which are continuous with respect to this norm is simply too large for the purposes here and its elements do not admit an integrable representation, in general. While many of the proofs and techniques work in general dimensions, the main result considers the \(1\)-dimensional case. This is mostly due to the technical complexities of the last sections. In the following, \(S^1\) will be identified with \([0,2\pi]\). Furthermore, let \(\mathcal{L}(S^1)\) denote the set of all piecewise linear functions on \(S^1\), i.e., the set of all functions for which there exists a finite partition of \([0,2\pi]\) in intervals such that the restriction of the function to each of the intervals is linear. Note that \(\mathcal{L}(S^1)\) is dense in \(\text{Lip}(S^1)\) with respect to the chosen topology. The main result now states that every \(\tau\)-continuous and rotation invariant valuation on \(\text{Lip}(S^1)\) admits a representation of the form \[f\mapsto \int_0^{2\pi}K(f(t),|f'(t)|) \,\text{d}H^1(t)\] on \(\mathcal{L}(S^1)\). Here, \(K:\mathbb{R}\times[0,\infty)\to\mathbb{R}\) is such that \(K(\cdot,\gamma)\) is a Borel function for every \(\gamma\geq 0\) and \(H^1\) denotes the (normalized) Hausdorff measure. Moreover, under the additional assumption of uniform \(\tau\)-continuity, the map \(K\) needs to be continuous and thus, this representation extends to all of \(\text{Lip}(S^1)\). Since each such map (with continuous \(K\)) is a rotation invariant and uniformly \(\tau\)-continuous valuation, a full classification is obtained in this case. Note that uniform \(\tau\)-continuity is rather strong, which the authors demonstrate by giving an example of a rotation invariant and \(\tau\)-continuous valuation which is not uniformly \(\tau\)-continuous.