Convexity in real analysis (Q416421)

This is a very accessible survey article on the geometry of convex domains in \(\mathbb R^n\). Although the setting is explicitly real, the choice of topics is influenced by the notions of convexity that are most commonly used in the theory of functions of several complex variables. The author emphasizes the approach via a smooth defining function \(\rho: \mathbb R^n\to \mathbb R\), which describes a domain \(\Omega\) as \(\rho^{-1}(-\infty,0)\). The Hessian of \(\rho\) is used to distinguish between the weakly and strongly convex domains. After a discussion of exhaustion functions, the author turns to convexity of finite order, a real-variable version of finite type. The order of convexity of a boundary point \(p\in\partial\Omega\) is the greatest integer \(k\) such that \(\rho(x)=O(|x-p|^k)\) at \(p\). This concept is motivated by the stability of points of finite order: if \(p\) is such a point, then the domain \(\Omega\) can be locally perturbed to a larger domain \(\widehat\Omega\) which contains \(p\) as an interior point, and shares the salient features of \(\Omega\). Since the survey is relatively short and is focused on the convexity of domains, the subject of convex functions remains essentially untouched. An interested reader may wish to explore it in [\textit{B. Simon}, Convexity. An analytic viewpoint. Cambridge Tracts in Mathematics 187. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (2011; Zbl 1229.26003)].