The unit ball is an attractor of the intersection body operator (Q624333)

The notion of an intersection body of a star body was introduced by \textit{E. Lutwak} [Adv. Math. 71, No.~2, 232--261 (1988; Zbl 0657.52002)]. \(K\) is called the intersection body of \(L\) if the radial function of \(K\) in every direction is equal to the \((d-1)\)-dimensional volume of the central hyperplane section of \(L\) perpendicular to this direction: \[ \rho_k(\xi)= \text{vol}_{d-1}(L\cap \xi^\perp),\qquad\forall\xi\in S^{d-1}, \] where \(\rho_k(\xi)= \{\sup a: a\xi\in K\}\) is the radial function of the body \(K\) and \(\xi^\perp=\{x\in\mathbb{R}^d: (x,\xi)= 0\}\) is the central hyperplane perpendicular to the vector \(\xi\). Using the formula for the volume in polar coordinates in \(\xi^\perp\), the following analytic definition of an intersection body of a star body is derived: \(K\) is the intersection body of \(L\) if \[ \rho_k(\xi)= {1\over d-1}\;{\mathfrak R}p^{d-1}_L(\xi):= {1\over d-1} \int \rho^{d-1}_1(\theta)\,d\theta. \] Here \({\mathfrak R}\) stands for the spherical Radon transform. The intersection body of a ball is again a ball. So, the unit ball \(B_d\subset\mathbb{R}^d\) is a fixed point of the intersection body operator acting on the space of all star-shaped origin symmetric bodies endowed with the Banach-Mazur distance. It is shown that this fixed point is a local attractor, i.e., that the iterations of the intersection body operator applied to any star-shaped origin symmetric body sufficiently close to \(B_d\) in Banach-Mazur distance converge to \(B_d\) in Banach-Mazur distance. In particular, it follows that the intersection body operator has no other fixed or periodic points in a small neighborhood of \(B_d\). -- A harmonic analysis version of this question is discussed.