arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Mohammad Ghomi.
We show that in Euclidean 3-space any closed curve $γ$ which contains the unit sphere within its convex hull has length $L\geq4π$, and characterize the case of equality. This result generalizes the authors' recent solution to a conjecture of Zalgaller. Furthermore, for the analogous problem in $n$ dimensions, we include the estimate $L\geq Cn\sqrt{n}$ by Nazarov, which is sharp up to the constant $C$.
We devise some differential forms after Chern to compute a family of formulas for comparing total mean curvatures of nested hypersurfaces in Riemannian manifolds. This yields a quicker proof of a recent result of the author with Joel Spruck, which had been obtained via Reilly's identities.
Using harmonic mean curvature flow, we establish a sharp Minkowski type lower bound for total mean curvature of convex surfaces with a given area in Cartan-Hadamard 3-manifolds. This inequality also improves the known estimates for total mean curvature in hyperbolic 3-space. As an application, we obtain a Bonnesen-style isoperimetric inequality for surfaces with convex distance function in nonpositively curved 3-spaces, via monotonicity results for total mean curvature. This connection between the Minkowski and isoperimetric inequalities is extended to Cartan-Hadamard manifolds of any dimension.
We show that a compact Riemannian $3$-manifold $M$ with strictly convex simply connected boundary and sectional curvature $K\leq a\leq 0$ is isometric to a convex domain in a complete simply connected space of constant curvature $a$, provided that $K\equiv a$ on planes tangent to the boundary of $M$. This yields a characterization of strictly convex surfaces with minimal total curvature in Cartan-Hadamard $3$-manifolds, and extends some rigidity results of Greene-Wu, Gromov, and Schroeder-Strake. Our proof is based on a recent comparison formula for total curvature of Riemannian hypersurfaces, which also yields some dual results for $K\geq a\geq 0$.
We obtain a comparison formula for integrals of mean curvatures of Riemannian hypersurfaces, via Reilly's identities. As applications we derive several geometric inequalities for a convex hypersurface $Γ$ in a Cartan-Hadamard manifold $M$. In particular we show that the first mean curvature integral of a convex hypersurface $γ$ nested inside $Γ$ cannot exceed that of $Γ$, which leads to a sharp lower bound in dimension $3$ for the total first mean curvature of $Γ$ in terms of the volume it bounds in $M$. This monotonicity property is extended to all mean curvature integrals when $γ$ is parallel to $Γ$, or $M$ has constant curvature. We also characterize hyperbolic balls as minimizers of the mean curvature integrals among balls with equal radii in Cartan-Hadamard manifolds.
We obtain an explicit formula for comparing total curvature of level sets of functions on Riemannian manifolds, and develop some applications of this result to the isoperimetric problem in spaces of nonpositive curvature.
We show that in Euclidean 3-space any closed curve which lies outside the unit sphere and contains the sphere within its convex hull has length at least $4π$. Equality holds only when the curve is composed of $4$ semicircles of length $π$, arranged in the shape of a baseball seam, as conjectured by V. A. Zalgaller in 1996.
We prove that any properly oriented $C^{2,1}$ isometric immersion of a positively curved Riemannian surface M into Euclidean 3-space is uniquely determined, up to a rigid motion, by its values on any curve segment in M. A generalization of this result to nonnegatively curved surfaces is presented as well under suitable conditions on their parabolic points. Thus we obtain a local version of Cohn-Vossen's rigidity theorem for convex surfaces subject to a Dirichlet condition. The proof employs in part Hormander's unique continuation principle for elliptic PDEs. Our approach also yields a short proof of Cohn-Vossen's theorem.
We prove the existence of a center, or continuous selection of a point, in the relative interior of $C^1$ embedded $k$-disks in Riemannian $n$-manifolds. If $k\le 3$ the center can be made equivariant with respect to the isometries of the manifold, and under mild assumptions the same holds for $k=4=n$. By contrast, for every $n\ge k\ge 6$ there are examples where an equivariant center does not exist. The center can be chosen to agree with any of the classical centers defined on the set of convex compacta in the Euclidean space.
We prove that in Euclidean space $R^{n+1}$ any compact immersed nonnegatively curved hypersurface $M$ with free boundary on the sphere $S^n$ is an embedded convex topological disk. In particular, when the $m^{th}$ mean curvature of $M$ is constant, for any $1\leq m\leq n$, $M$ is a spherical cap or an equatorial disk.
A pseudo-edge graph of a convex polyhedron K is a 3-connected embedded graph in K whose vertices coincide with those of K, whose edges are distance minimizing geodesics, and whose faces are convex. We construct a convex polyhedron K in Euclidean 3-space with a pseudo-edge graph with respect to which K is not unfoldable. The proof is based on a result of Pogorelov on convex caps with prescribed curvature, and an unfoldability obstruction for almost flat convex caps due to Tarasov. Our example, which has 340 vertices, significantly simplifies an earlier construction by Tarasov, and confirms that Durer's conjecture does not hold for pseudo-edge unfoldings.
We show that the torsion of any simple closed curve $Γ$ in Euclidean 3-space changes sign at least $4$ times provided that it is star-shaped and locally convex with respect to a point $o$ in the interior of its convex hull. The latter condition means that through each point $p$ of $Γ$ there passes a plane $H$, not containing $o$, such that a neighborhood of $p$ in $Γ$ lies on the same side of $H$ as does $o$. This generalizes the four vertex theorem of Sedykh for convex space curves. Following Thorbergsson and Umehara, we reduce the proof to the result of Segre on inflections of spherical curves, which is also known as Arnold's tennis ball theorem.
The width $w$ of a curve $γ$ in Euclidean space $R^n$ is the infimum of the distances between all pairs of parallel hyperplanes which bound $γ$, while its inradius $r$ is the supremum of the radii of all spheres which are contained in the convex hull of $γ$ and are disjoint from $γ$. We use a mixture of topological and integral geometric techniques, including an application of Borsuk Ulam theorem due to Wienholtz and Crofton's formulas, to obtain lower bounds on the length of $γ$ subject to constraints on $r$ and $w$. The special case of closed curves is also considered in each category. Our estimates confirm some conjectures of Zalgaller up to $99\%$ of their stated value, while we also disprove one of them.
We prove that the torsion of any closed space curve which bounds a simply connected locally convex surface vanishes at least 4 times. This answers a question of Rosenberg related to a problem of Yau on characterizing the boundary of positively curved disks in Euclidean space. Furthermore, our result generalizes the 4 vertex theorem of Sedykh for convex space curves, and thus constitutes a far reaching extension of the classical 4 vertex theorem. The proof involves studying the arrangement of convex caps in a locally convex surface, and yields a Bose type formula for these objects.
The total diameter of a closed planar curve $C\subset R^2$ is the integral of its antipodal chord lengths. We show that this quantity is bounded below by twice the area of $C$. Furthermore, when $C$ is convex or centrally symmetric, the lower bound is twice as large. Both inequalities are sharp and the equality holds in the convex case only when $C$ is a circle. We also generalize these results to $m$ dimensional submanifolds of $R^n$, where the "area" will be defined in terms of the mod $2$ winding numbers of the submanifold about the $n-m-1$ dimensional affine subspaces of $R^n$.
We show that every convex polyhedron admits a simple edge unfolding after an affine transformation. In particular there exists no combinatorial obstruction to a positive resolution of Durer's unfoldability problem, which answers a question of Croft, Falconer, and Guy. Among other techniques, the proof employs a topological characterization for embeddings among the planar immersions of the disk.
We characterize embedded $\C^1$ hypersurfaces of $\R^n$ as the only locally closed sets with continuously varying flat tangent cones whose measure-theoretic-multiplicity is at most $m<3/2$. It follows then that any (topological) hypersurface which has flat tangent cones and is supported everywhere by balls of uniform radius is $\C^1$. In the real analytic case the same conclusion holds under the weakened hypothesis that each tangent cone be a hypersurface. In particular, any convex real analytic hypersurface $X\subset\R^n$ is $\C^1$. Furthermore, if $X$ is real algebraic, strictly convex, and unbounded then its projective closure is a $\C^1$ hypersurface as well, which shows that $X$ is the graph of a function defined over an entire hyperplane.
We show that every smooth closed curve C immersed in Euclidean 3-space satisfies the sharp inequality 2(P+I)+V >5 which relates the numbers P of pairs of parallel tangent lines, I of inflections (or points of vanishing curvature), and V of vertices (or points of vanishing torsion) of C. We also show that 2(P'+I)+V >3, where P' is the number of pairs of concordant parallel tangent lines. The proofs, which employ curve shortening flow with surgery, are based on corresponding inequalities for the numbers of double points, singularities, and inflections of closed curves in the real projective plane and the sphere which intersect every closed geodesic. These findings extend some classical results in curve theory including works of Moebius, Fenchel, and Segre, which is also known as Arnold's "tennis ball theorem".