About regularity of collections of sets (Q2501521)

The author provides results on extremality, stationarity and regularity properties of collections of sets in normed spaces on the base of the function \[ \theta_p[\Omega_1,\dots, \Omega_n](x^0):= \sup\Biggl\{r\geq 0: \bigcap^n_{i=1} (\Omega_i- a_i)\cap (x^0+\rho B)\neq\emptyset,\;\forall a_i\in rB\Biggr\} \] and related functions. Here \(\Omega_1,\dots, \Omega_n\) \((n> 1)\) are arbitrary sets in a normed space \(X\), \(x^0\in \bigcap^n_{i=1} \Omega_i\) is an arbitrary point, \(B\subset X\) is the closed unit ball in \(X\) and \(\rho> 0\) is a positive number. The function \(\theta_\rho[\Omega_1,\dots, \Omega_n](x^0)\) gives an indication how far the sets can be shifted apart while still intersecting in a neighborhood of \(x^0\). In this manner, the collection of sets is called (local) extremal iff the function \(\theta_\rho\) is zero for all (for small) numbers \(\rho> 0\). The collection of sets is stationary iff the quotient \(\theta_\rho/\rho\) tends to zero for \(\rho\to 0\) and -- in the opposite case -- it is regular iff the lower limit of \(\theta_\rho/\rho\) is positive. The main objective of the paper is the notion of strong regularity of sets, which is closely connected with constraint qualifications in mathematical programming. The author presents primal and dual characterizations of this notion.