Intersection Bodies and Generalized Cosine Transforms

Abstract

Intersection bodies represent a remarkable class of geometric objects associated with sections of star bodies and invoking Radon transforms, generalized cosine transforms, and the relevant Fourier analysis. The main focus of this article is interrelation between generalized cosine transforms of different kinds in the context of their application to investigation of a certain family of intersection bodies, which we call $\lam$-intersection bodies. The latter include $k$-intersection bodies (in the sense of A. Koldobsky) and unit balls of finite-dimensional subspaces of $L_p$-spaces. In particular, we show that restrictions onto lower dimensional subspaces of the spherical Radon transforms and the generalized cosine transforms preserve their integral-geometric structure. We apply this result to the study of sections of $\lam$-intersection bodies. New characterizations of this class of bodies are obtained and examples are given. We also review some known facts and give them new proofs.