Stability from rigidity via umbilicity (Q7006033)

This paper is about rigidity theorems in classical hypersurface theory and their stability properties. The author considers a range of geometric stability problems for hypersurfaces of space forms. The key idea of the present paper is that it is possible to control the distance to a sphere by an \(L^p\)-norm of the Cauchy-Schwarz deficit, without relying on \(f\) being a solution to a PDE. Namely, the author derives an estimate relating the distance to a geodesic sphere of an embedded hypersurface with integral norms of the traceless Hessian operator of a level set function for the open set bounded by the hypersurface. This flexibility allows for the treatment of a broader range of stability results, such as an extension of the results by Magnanini and Poggesi to space forms of constant curvature; stability results for the deficit in the Heintze-Karcher inequality in space forms; stability in Alexandrov's soap bubble theorem in space forms; a double-stability result for Serrin's overdetermined problem with a nonlinear source term; as well as a stability result in bi-Laplace Steklov eigenvalue problems and non-convex Alexandrov-Fenchel inequalities. The cost of this flexibility is that, in particular geometric problems, some constants may be improved with methods tailor-made for the problem at hand.