Mean width of regular polytopes and expected maxima of correlated Gaussian variables

Abstract

An old conjecture states that among all simplices inscribed in the unit sphere the regular one has the maximal mean width. An equivalent formulation is that for any centered Gaussian vector $(\xi_1,\dots,\xi_n)$ satisfying $\mathbb E\xi_1^2= \dots =\mathbb E\xi_n^2=1$ one has $$ \mathbb E\,\max\{\xi_1,\dots,\xi_n\}\leq\sqrt{\frac{n}{n-1}}\, \mathbb E\,\max\{\eta_1,\dots,\eta_n\}, $$ where $\eta_1,\eta_2,\dots,$ are independent standard Gaussian variables. Using this probabilistic interpretation we derive an asymptotic version of the conjecture. We also show that the mean width of the regular simplex with $2n$ vertices is remarkably close to the mean width of the regular crosspolytope with the same number of vertices. Interpreted probabilistically, our result states that $$ 1\leq\frac{\mathbb E\,\max\{|\eta_1|,\dots,|\eta_n|\}}{\mathbb E\,\max\{\eta_1,\dots,\eta_{2n}\}} \leq\min\left\{\sqrt{\frac{2n}{2n-1}}, \, 1+\frac{C}{n\, \log n} \right\}, $$ where $C>0$ is an absolute constant. We also compute the higher moments of the projection length $W$ of the regular cube, simplex and crosspolytope onto a line with random direction, thus proving several formulas conjectured by S. Finch. Finally, we prove distributional limit theorems for the length of random projection as the dimension goes to $\infty$. In the case of the $n$-dimensional unit cube $Q_n$, we prove that $$ W_{Q_n} - \sqrt{\frac{2n}{\pi}} \overset{d}{\underset{n\to\infty}\longrightarrow} {\mathcal{N}} \left(0, \frac{\pi-3}{\pi}\right), $$ whereas for the simplex and the crosspolytope the limiting distributions are related to the Gumbel double exponential law.