A characterization of the disc through a hessian equality

Abstract

Let M be a bounded open plane domain. Let f be a continuous function on the closure of M, 3-times continuously differentiable in M, which vanish on the boundary. Polterovich and Sodin proved that the values of f cannot exceed the norm of the hessian of f, averaged over the entire domain M. In this paper we study the equality case for this inequality. We show that equality holds if and only if M is a open disc and f belongs to a special class of radial functions.