Approaching the Kannan-Lovász-Simonovits and variance conjectures (Q478648)

The aim of these lecture notes is to introduce interested readers, also non-experts, to two of the famous major open problems of contemporary asymptotic geometry, namely the Kannan-Lovász-Simonovits (KLS) conjecture and the variance conjecture. For a Borel measure \(\mu\) on \({\mathbb R}^n\), let \(\mathrm E_\mu\), \(\mathrm{Var}_\mu\) be the corresponding expectation and variance. For a Borel set \(A\subset{\mathbb R}\) and \(\varepsilon>0\), let \(\mu^+(A) =\liminf_{\varepsilon\to 0} [\mu(A^\varepsilon) -\mu(A)]/\varepsilon\), where \(A^\varepsilon = \{a+x: a\in A,\, |x|< \varepsilon\}\). Now suppose that \(\mu\) is log-concave and centered. Then the KLS conjecture states that there is an absolute constant \(C>0\) such that \( \mu^+(A) \geq C\lambda_\mu^{-1} \min\{\mu(A),\mu(A^c)\}\), where \(\lambda_\mu^2\) is the largest eigenvalue of the covariance matrix \((\mathrm E_\mu x_ix_j)_{i,j}\). The variance conjecture is a special case and states that \( \mathrm{Var}_\mu |x|^2 \leq C\lambda_\mu^2{\mathrm E}_\mu|x|^2\); in particular, if \(\mu\) is isotropic, it takes the form \(\mathrm{Var}_\mu|x|^2\leq Cn\). The first chapter introduces the conjectures and explains their connection with theoretical computer science. It presents various notions that are relevant for the discussion of the conjectures, such as Cheeger-type isoperimetric inequalities, Poincaré inequalities, spectral gap, concentration of measure, thin shell width. The second chapter is dedicated to the main examples where one or both of the conjectures have been proved. It also presents Klartag's results on unconditional log-concave probabilities. The third chapter is devoted to relations with some other famous conjectures of asymptotic convexity. In particular, it presents theorems by Eldan and Klartag and by Ball and Nguyen, relating the variance or the KLS conjecture with the hyperplane conjecture, and Eldan's work on the relation between the KLS and the thin-shell conjecture. It also sketches the proof of the estimate for the thin-shell width given by Guédon and E. Milman. The notes are very clearly written. For a more comprehensive picture of the whole theory of asymptotic convex geometry, the authors recommend the recent book [\textit{S. Brazitikos} et al., Geometry of isotropic convex bodies. Providence, RI: American Mathematical Society (AMS) (2014; Zbl 1304.52001)].