Complex interpolation of \(\mathbb R\)-norms, duality and foliations (Q2302432)

The authors work in the following setting. On \(\mathbb{R}^{2n}=\mathbb{C}^n\), denote by \(|\cdot|\) the Euclidean/Hermitean norm and let \(\mathbb{D}=\{t\in\mathbb{C}:|t|<1\}\) and \(\partial\mathbb{D}=\{t\in \mathbb{C}:|t|=1\}\)be the unit disc and its boundary in \(\mathbb{C}\). Then a~real norm \(\|\cdot\|\) on \(\mathbb{R}^{2n}\) is a complex norm if \(\|e^{it}w\|=\|w\|\). One also considers a family \(\|\cdot\|_s\), \(s\in\partial\mathbb{D}\), of norms on \(\mathbb{C}^n\) for which there exist \(C,c>0\) with \(c|w|\le\|w\|_s\le C|w|\) for all \(w\in\mathbb{C}^n\) and \(s\in\partial\mathbb{D}\), and such that the mapping \((s,w)\mapsto \|w\|_s\) is measurable on \(\partial\mathbb{D}\times \mathbb{C}^n\). Then complex interpolation produces for each \( t\in \mathbb{D}\) a norm \(\|\cdot\|_t\) having as boundary values the norms \(\|\cdot\|_s,\,s\in\partial\mathbb{D}.\) Furthermore, the interpolation in the complex case preserves duality, i.e., the interpolated norm of the dual norms is the dual norm of the interpolated norms. The interpolation of linear operators is not discussed in the paper under review. The dual norm is given by \(\|w\|^\bigstar=\sup\{\mathrm{Re\,}(w\cdot z) : \|w\|\le 1\}\) in the real case and by \(\|w\|^\bigstar=\sup\{|w\cdot z| : \|w\|\le 1\}\) in the complex case. The authors focus in this paper on the case of real norms, showing that the situation drastically differs from the complex case. The duality in this case is given by the complex Legendre transform for convex functions (see [\textit{B. Berndtsson} et al., Am. J. Math. 142, No. 1, 323--339 (2020; Zbl 07176037)]) and the results can also be interpreted as new properties of solutions of the homogeneous complex Monge-Ampère equation.