There are such examples already in Riemannian world!
In fact in any generic Riemannian manifold of dimension ge3 convex hull of 3 points in general position is not closed.
BUT it is hard to make explicit and generic at the same time :)
If it is closed then there are a lot of geodesics lying in its boundary --- that is rare!
To see it do the following exercise first: Show that in generic 3-dimensional manifold, arbitrary smooth convex surface contains no geodesic. (Here geodesic = geodesic in ambient space.)
To make word "generic" more clear: show that any metric admits Cinfty-perturbation such that above property holds.
Semisolution:
Assume that a geodesic gamma lies in the boundary of a convex set K with smooth boundary. Let N(t) be the outer normal vector to K at gamma(t). Note that N(t) is parallel.
Further note that from convexity of K we get that for any Jacoby field J(t) such that
langleN(t0),J(t0)ranglele0textandlangleN(t1),J(t1)ranglele0,
we have
langleN(t),J(t)ranglele0textift0<t<t1.
Note that this condition does not hold if the curvature tensor on gamma is generic.
P.S. Roughly it means that convex hulls in Riemannian world are too complicated. But I know one example where it is used, see Kleiner's An isoperimetric comparison theorem.
But he is only using that Gauss curvature of non-extremal points on the boundary of convex hulls is zero...
Appendix. (A construction of convex hull.) To construct convex hull you can do the following: start with some set K0 and construct a sequence of sets Kn so that Kn+1 is a union of all geodesics with ends in Kn. The union W of all Kn is convex hull. Now assume it coincides with its closure barw. In particular if xinpartialbarW then xinKn for some n. I.e. there is a geodesic in barW passing through x (if xnotinK0). From convexity, it is clear that such geodesic lies in partialbarW...
No comments:
Post a Comment