The Brunn-Minkowski inequality and a Minkowski problem for $\mathcal{A}$-harmonic Green's function

Abstract

In this article we study two classical problems in convex geometry associated to $\mathcal{A}$-harmonic PDEs, quasi-linear elliptic PDEs whose structure is modeled on the $p$-Laplace equation. Let $p$ be fixed with $2\leq n\leq p<\infty$. For a convex compact set $E$ in $\mathbb{R}^{n}$, we define and then prove the existence and uniqueness of the so called $\mathcal{A}$-harmonic Green's function for the complement of $E$ with pole at infinity. We then define a quantity $\mbox{C}_{\mathcal{A}}(E)$ which can be seen as the behavior of this function near infinity. In the first part of this article, we prove that $\mbox{C}_{\mathcal{A}}(\cdot)$ satisfies the following Brunn-Minkowski type inequality \[ \left[\mbox{C}_\mathcal{A} ( \lambda E_1 + (1-\lambda) E_2 )\right]^{\frac{1}{p-n}} \geq \lambda \, \left[\mbox{C}_\mathcal{A} ( E_1 )\right]^{\frac{1}{p-n}} + (1-\lambda) \left[\mbox{C}_\mathcal{A} (E_2 )\right]^{\frac{1}{p-n}} \] when $n<p<\infty$, $0 \leq \lambda \leq 1$, and $E_1, E_2$ are nonempty convex compact sets in $\mathbb{R}^{n}$. We also show that $\mbox{C}_\mathcal{A}(\cdot)$ satisfies a similar inequality when $p=n$. Moreover, if equality holds in the either of these inequalities for some $E_1$ and $E_2$ then under certain regularity and structural assumptions on $\mathcal{A}$ we show that these two sets are homothetic. In the second part of this article we study a Minkowski type problem for a measure associated to the $\mathcal{A}$-harmonic Green's function for the complement of a convex compact set $E$ when $n\leq p<\infty$. If $\mu_E$ denotes this measure, then we show that necessary and sufficient conditions for existence under this setting are exactly the same conditions as in the classical Minkowski problem. We also show that this problem has a unique solution up to translation.