arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Aldo Pratelli.
We show that a planar bi-Lipschitz orientation-preserving homeomorphism can be approximated in the $W^{1,p}$ norm, together with its inverse, with an orientation-preserving homeomorphism which is piecewise affine or smooth.
We prove that, given a planar bi-Lipschitz homeomorphism $u$ defined on the boundary of the unit square, it is possible to extend it to a function $v$ of the whole square, in such a way that $v$ is still bi-Lipschitz. In particular, denoting by $L$ and $\widetilde L$ the bi-Lipschitz constants of $u$ and $v$, with our construction one has $\widetilde L \leq C L^4$ (being $C$ an explicit geometrical constant). The same result was proved in 1980 by Tukia (see \cite{Tukia}), using a completely different argument, but without any estimate on the constant $\widetilde L$. In particular, the function $v$ can be taken either smooth or (countably) piecewise affine.
The isodiametric inequality is derived from the isoperimetric inequality trough a variational principle, establishing that balls maximize the perimeter among convex sets with fixed diameter. This principle brings also quantitative improvements to the isodiametric inequality, shown to be sharp by explicit nearly optimal sets.
It is well-known that duality in the Monge-Kantorovich transport problem holds true provided that the cost function $c:X\times Y\to [0,\infty]$ is lower semi-continuous or finitely valued, but it may fail otherwise. We present a suitable notion of \emph{rectificaton} $c_r$ of the cost $c$, so that the Monge-Kantorovich duality holds true replacing $c$ by $c_r$. In particular, passing from $c$ to $c_r$ only changes the value of the primal Monge-Kantorovich problem. Finally, the rectified function $c_r $ is lower semi-continuous as soon as $X$ and $Y$ are endowed with proper topologies, thus emphasizing the role of lower semi-continuity in the duality-theory of optimal transport.
Consider a distribution of citizens in an urban area in which some services (supermarkets, post offices...) are present. Each citizen, in order to use a service, spends an amount of time which is due both to the travel time to the service and to the queue time waiting in the service. The choice of the service to be used is made by every citizen in order to be served more quickly. Two types of problems can be considered: a global optimization of the total time spent by the citizens of the whole city (we define a global optimum and we study it with techniques from optimal mass transportation) and an individual optimization, in which each citizen chooses the service trying to minimize just his own time expense (we define the concept of equilibrium and we study it with techniques from game theory). In this framework we are also able to exhibit two time-dependent strategies (based on the notions of prudence and memory respectively) which converge to the equilibrium.