The sharp threshold for Hausdorff convexification under Minkowski addition

Abstract

The Dyn-Farkhi conjecture asserts that the square of the Hausdorff distance from a compact set to its convex hull is subadditive with respect to Minkowski addition. The conjecture is elementary in dimension 1, was recently proved by Meyer in dimension 2, and was disproved in dimensions $n\geq3$ by Fradelizi, Madiman, Marsiglietti, and Zvavitch. The symmetric case $A=B$, however, remained open. We show that the conjecture already fails in this restricted setting. More precisely, for every $n\geq3$, we construct a compact set $A\subset\mathbb{R}^n$ such that $$d(A(k))=d(A)>0$$ for every $1\leq k\leq n-1$, where $d(X)$ is the Hausdorff distance from $X$ to its convex hull and $A(k):=\frac1k (A+\dots+A)$ is the $k$-fold iterated Minkowski average of $A$. We also prove that the threshold $k=n$ is sharp: for every nonempty compact $A\subset\mathbb{R}^n$ with $n\geq 2$, we have $$d(A(n))\leq \left(1-\frac{n-1}{n(2n-1)}\right)d(A).$$