Stability of convex disks (Q6073860)

In 1959, \textit{V. A. Toponogov} [Dokl. Akad. Nauk SSSR 124, 282--284 (1959; Zbl 0092.14603)] proved the following elegant result. Let \(\left( M,g\right) \) be a closed surface with Gaussian curvature \(K_{g}\geq\kappa>0\). Then any simple closed geodesic in \(M\) has length less or equal to \(2\pi/\sqrt{\kappa}\). In addition, if there is a simple closed geodesic in \(M\) with length \(2\pi/\sqrt{\kappa}\), then \(\left( M,g\right) \) is isometric to the \(2\)-dimensional sphere of radius \(1/\sqrt{\kappa}\). Let \(\left( M,g\right) \) be a \(2\)-dimensional Riemannian manifold with boundary. Let \(K_{g}\) be its Gaussian curvature, \(k_{g}\) be the geodesic curvature of its boundary, and \(L_{g}\) be the length functional of \(g\). For a positive number \(c\), let \(\overline{\mathbf{B}}_{\cot^{-1}\left( c\right) }\) be a closed geodesic disk of radius \(\cot^{-1}\left( c\right) \) in the unit sphere \(\mathbb{S}^{2}\). In [J. Geom. Anal. 19, No. 3, 628--642 (2009; Zbl 1175.53056)], \textit{F. Hang} and \textit{X. Wang} proved the following theorem which gives an alternative proof of Toponogov's theorem. If \(K_{g}\geq1\) and \(k_{g}\geq c>0\), then \(L_{g}\left( \partial M\right) \leq2\pi/\sqrt{1+c^{2}}\). In addition, \(L_{g}\left( \partial M\right) =2\pi/\sqrt{1+c^{2}}\) if and only if \(\left( M,g\right) \) is isometric to \(\overline{\mathbf{B}}_{\cot^{-1}\left( c\right) }\). The main theorem of the paper establishes the stability for the theorem of Hang and Wang. The author proves that given \(c>0\) and \(\delta>0\), there is a positive \(\varepsilon=\varepsilon\left( c,\delta \right) \) such that if \[L_{g}\left( \partial M\right) \geq\frac{2\pi }{\sqrt{1+c^{2}}}\left( 1-\varepsilon\right), \] then the Gromov-Hausdorff distance between \(\left( M,g\right) \) and \(\overline{\mathbf{B}}_{\cot ^{-1}\left( c\right) }\) is less than \(\delta\).