3.5 Extension property: the Fermat case [00TK]
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3.5 Extension property: the Fermat case
We do not know the equivalence between the extension property and the local convexity property. However, in the case of the Fermat family Example 3.1, the polyhedral set has a discrete symmetry by the permutation group of the vertices of , corresponding to the permutations of the monomials . This can be used to our advantage.
Notation.
Denote the vertices of as , which coincide with the outward normal vectors because . Denote the vertices of as , so that
Let be the star of in the barycentric subdivision of . Let be the subset of points not contained in the interior of any of these stars. The affine structure on extends to , by decreeing that on the interior of we use the coordinates for the chart . As has codimension two inside , this makes into a singular affine manifold.
Proposition 3.27.
In the Fermat case, if is a locally convex function on , which is invariant under the permutation group. Then satisfies the extension property.
Proof.
We need to prove the characterisation in Prop. 3.19. Without loss of generality is achieved by . We need to find , such that For this we study the gradient of the function on the various -charts.
First, notice for on the face , namely the convex hull of , the vector is parallel to the face, and by convexity of the directional derivative is monotone along the path from to , so must be maximized at . In particular we consider such line segments on the face parallel to for . By the discrete symmetry, must be zero on the plane of reflection bisecting the face. Thus for , , the subset of the face
agrees exactly with the half of the face containing . Therefore the subset of face
is exactly the intersection of with the face. Without loss of generality lies in .
We follow the notation in the proof of Prop. 3.26. In the -chart, denote the gradient of as , so that for in the -chart,
A priori lives in . We lift to by demanding , so by the above discussion for Define , then for all . We regard as the gradient of at , and write as a function of . This construction can be made on other faces as well, and on the intersection of two faces the definitions are compatible.
We claim : it suffices to show . Notice . Consider the line segment in the face joining to the boundary of the face in the direction , which stays inside , and along which increases, or equivalently increases. But the boundary of the face lies also on a different face, and we can use the information from this new face to deduce there.
By construction for in the -chart,
We claim that in fact holds for all . We are left to check for on the face , namely the complement of the -chart. Consider the -chart for . We can write according to the decomposition , that
By local convexity, in the -chart is convex, so there is some , such that for any in the -chart
But a gradient vector of at is , so we may take . Thus
Now as in the proof of Prop. 3.26, and by . This implies as required.
We have verified the characterisation in Prop. 3.19, hence the extension property. ∎
The proof above contains some additional information about the gradients.
Corollary 3.28.
In the region , the directional derivative of the canonical extension satisfies In particular, in this region, for any with , the function is constant upon translation in the -direction.
Proof.
By Remark 3.21, the introduced in the above proof is actually the gradient of the extension over . By the proof above, we know on . This directional derivative can only increase as moves in the -direction. But on since the extension is admissible, so everywhere, hence the claim. ∎
For later use, we define the notion of real MA equation in the Fermat case.
Definition 3.29.
Let be a locally convex function on invariant under the discrete symmetry. Then is called an Aleksandrov solution of the real MA equation on if
- •
On the interior of any top dimensional face of , in a set of standard local affine coordinates with equal to the standard volume form , the function satisfies in the Aleksandrov sense.
- •
On , we use the standard affine coordinates associated to the chart. We demand for any vertex of with , the local function satisfies in the Aleksandrov sense.
Schematically we write .
Remark 3.30.
Notice that the definition is compatible on overlapping charts because the transition functions lie in . On the locus we make no definition.