First variation of functional Wulff shapes

Abstract

We introduce functional Wulff shapes based on the classical construction for compact convex sets. With this new tool, we establish a functional version of Aleksandrov's variational lemma in the family of convex functions with compact domain. The resulting formula is then applied to evaluate the first variation of a class of functionals on convex functions. In particular, we extend a recent result by Huang, Liu, Xi, and Zhao.