Local extrema for hypercube sections

Abstract

Consider the hyperplanes at a fixed distance $t$ from the center of the hypercube $[0,1]^d$. Significant attention has been given to determining the hyperplanes $H$ among these such that the $(d-1)$-dimensional volume of $H\cap[0,1]^d$ is maximal or minimal. In the spirit of a question by Vitali Milman, the corresponding local problem is considered here when $H$ is orthogonal to a diagonal or a sub-diagonal of the hypercube. It is proven in particular that this volume is strictly locally maximal at the diagonals in all dimensions greater than $3$ within a range for $t$ that is asymptotic to $\sqrt{d}/\!\log d$. At lower order sub-diagonals, this volume is shown to be strictly locally maximal when $t$ is close to $0$ and not locally extremal when $t$ is large. This relies on a characterisation of local extremality at the diagonals and sub-diagonals that allows to solve the problem over the whole possible range for $t$ in any fixed, reasonably low dimension.