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# Some isoperimetric comparison theorems for convex bodies in Riemannian manifolds

## 1. Introduction

Let $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ be a domain (connected open set) with non-empty boundary of a Riemannian manifold $`(M^{n+1},g)`$. The so-called *partitioning problem* in $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ consists on finding, for a given $`V<\mathrm{vol}(\mathrm{\Omega })`$, a minimum of the perimeter functional $`𝒫(,\mathrm{\Omega })`$ in the class of sets in $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ that enclose volume $`V`$. Here $`\mathrm{vol}(E)`$ is the $`(n+1)`$-dimensional Hausdorff measure of a set $`EM`$ and $`𝒫(E,\mathrm{\Omega })`$ denotes the *perimeter* of $`E`$ *relative to* $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$, which essentially measures the area of $`E\mathrm{\Omega }`$ (see Section 2 for a precise definition). Solutions to the partitioning problem are called *isoperimetric regions* or *minimizers* in $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ of volume $`V`$.

The partitioning problem is object of an intensive study. The first questions taken into consideration were related to the existence and regularity of minimizers. In the light of standard results in Geometric Measure Theory \[M1\], inside a smooth domain $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ with compact closure, minimizers do exist for any given volume and their boundaries are smooth, up to a closed set of singularities with high Hausdorff codimension, (see Proposition 2.3 for a precise statement). Recently, geometric and topological properties of minimizers have been studied by A. Ros and E. Vergasta \[RV\] and P. Sternberg and K. Zumbrun \[SZ2\] inside a Euclidean convex body, and by M. Ritoré and C. Rosales \[RR\] inside Euclidean cones. However, in spite of the last advances, the complete description of isoperimetric regions has been achieved only for certain convex domains such as half-spaces in the simply connected space forms, Euclidean balls, Euclidean slabs, and Euclidean convex cones, among others. A beautiful survey containing most of the results above, including recent progress and open questions is the one by A. Ros \[Ro\].

Much of the information concerning the partitioning problem is contained in the *isoperimetric profile of* $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$: the function $`I_\mathrm{\Omega }(V)`$ which assigns to $`V`$ the least-perimeter separation of volume $`V`$ in $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$. In this paper, assuming that $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ is a convex domain with compact closure in $`(M^{n+1},g)`$, we prove regularity properties of the profile, connectivity results for minimizers and for their boundaries, and above all, we obtain sharp lower and upper bounds for the isoperimetric profile involving the infimum of the Ricci curvature of $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$.

We begin this work with a preliminary section where we introduce the notation and give some basic results. For example, Proposition 2.1 is an adaptation to the partitioning problem of a result by P. Bérard and D. Meyer \[BM\] in which it is shown that the isoperimetric profile $`I_\mathrm{\Omega }`$ approaches asymptotically the profile of the half-space in $`^{n+1}`$ for small volumes. We also summarize existence and regularity results for isoperimetric regions in Proposition 2.3, and state an analytic comparison result for the solutions of a differential inequality (Theorem 2.5) that will be useful in Section 4.

In Section 3, inspired by previous results by C. Bavard and P. Pansu \[BP\], P. Sternberg and K. Zumbrun \[SZ2\], F. Morgan and D. Johnson \[MJ\], and V. Bayle \[Ba2\], we prove (Theorem 3.2) that the renormalized isoperimetric profile $`Y_\mathrm{\Omega }=I_\mathrm{\Omega }^{(n+1)/n}`$ of a smooth convex domain $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ with compact closure satisfies a second order differential inequality of the type

(1.1)
$$Y_\mathrm{\Omega }^{\prime \prime }CY_\mathrm{\Omega }^{(1n)/(1+n)},$$

where $`C`$ is a constant depending on the dimension of the ambient manifold and on a lower bound on the Ricci curvature over $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$.

The idea of the proof of (1.1) relies on a local comparison of $`Y_\mathrm{\Omega }`$ with the renormalized profile $`P(V)^{(n+1)/n}`$ associated to the deformation of a minimizer $`E`$ -which exists by the compactness of $`\overline{\mathrm{\Omega }}`$\- given by equidistant hypersurfaces to $`E\mathrm{\Omega }`$. Some technical difficulties arise due to the possible presence in high dimensions of singularities in $`E\mathrm{\Omega }`$. These difficulties are solved by an approximation argument consisting in the construction of “almost parallel variations” (Lemma 3.1). This scheme of proof was previously used in \[MJ\] and \[Ba2\] to get a differential inequality for the isoperimetric profile of a closed Riemannian manifold, and in \[RR\] to characterize isoperimetric regions in smooth convex cones. As in \[RR\], our proof differs from those of \[MJ\] and \[Ba2\] in the presence of a boundary term involving the second fundamental form of $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ which can be controlled by using the convexity of $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$.

From the differential inequality (1.1), that yields concavity of the profile under the assumption of non-negative Ricci curvature on $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ (Theorem 3.5), we derive regularity properties of the profile (Proposition 3.7) and topological consequences related to the connectivity of minimizers and isoperimetric hypersurfaces (Propositions 3.11 and 3.9). Similar previous results for closed Riemannian manifolds and for convex bodies in the Euclidean setting were established in \[BP\], \[MJ\], \[SZ2\], \[K\] and \[Ba2\].

In Section 4 we use analytic arguments to obtain geometric comparison theorems. As a matter of fact, integration of the differential inequality (1.1) makes possible to compare the isoperimetric profile of a smooth convex domain $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ with compact closure and $`\mathrm{Ric}n\delta `$, with an exact solution of the differential equation associated to (1.1) that satisfies either the same initial conditions or the same boundary conditions. On the one hand we prove in Theorem 4.1 the isoperimetric inequality

(1.2)
$$I_\mathrm{\Omega }(V)I_{_\delta ^{n+1}}(V),V[0,\mathrm{vol}(\mathrm{\Omega })],$$

where $`_\delta ^{n+1}`$ is a half-space in the simply connected space form with constant sectional curvature $`\delta `$. In Remark 4.5 we indicate that the geometric arguments employed by F. Morgan and D. Johnson in \[MJ, Theorem 3.5\] can be adapted to prove that (1.2) is also valid for unbounded convex domains. In Theorem 4.6 we show that equality in (1.2) for some $`V_0(0,\mathrm{vol}(\mathrm{\Omega })]`$ implies that $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ is a totally geodesic hypersurface and $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ has constant sectional curvature $`\delta `$ in a neighborhood of $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$.

On the other hand, in Corollary 4.9 we deduce a lower bound for the profile that should be compared with Lévy–Gromov inequality \[Gr\]. In precise terms, we prove that any Borel set $`E`$ contained in a smooth convex body $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ with $`\mathrm{Ric}n\delta >0`$, satisfies

(1.3) $`{\displaystyle \frac{𝒫(E,\mathrm{\Omega })}{\mathrm{vol}(\mathrm{\Omega })}}{\displaystyle \frac{𝒫(E^{},_\delta ^{n+1})}{\mathrm{vol}(_\delta ^{n+1})}},`$
where $`E^{}_\delta ^{n+1}`$ is a half-ball centered at $`_\delta ^{n+1}`$ with $`\mathrm{vol}(E)/\mathrm{vol}(\mathrm{\Omega })=\mathrm{vol}(E^{})/\mathrm{vol}(_\delta ^{n+1})`$. Moreover, inequality (1.3) is sharp since equality for a proper set $`E\mathrm{\Omega }`$ implies that $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ is isometric to $`_\delta ^{n+1}`$.

Our isoperimetric inequalities in Section 4 can be used, as in \[Ga\] and \[Ba2\], to derive comparison theorems for convex bodies involving geometric quantities such as the volume or the diameter, see Theorem 2.7, Remark 4.2 and Theorem 4.13. Furthermore, by reproducing the symmetrization arguments in \[BM, Théorème 5\] we prove in Theorem 4.15 that if $`\mathrm{Ric}n\delta >0`$ on $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$, then the lowest non-zero eigenvalue for the Laplace operator in $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ with Neumann boundary condition is bounded from below by the one of the half-sphere $`_\delta ^{n+1}`$ of radius $`1/\sqrt{\delta }`$, with equality if and only if $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ is isometric to $`_\delta ^{n+1}`$.

Finally, we have added in a last section as an appendix a geometric proof of inequality (1.2) for the case of a smooth convex body $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ in $`^{n+1}`$.

As mentioned in \[SZ2\], in addition to the geometric interest of this work, we remark that the partitioning problem can be linked with a well-studied variational question related to phase transitions (see also \[SZ1\]).

*Acknowledgements.* The idea of this work was conceived while V. Bayle was visiting the University of Granada in the spring of 2003. The first author was supported by the Marie Curie Research Training Networks “EDGE”, HPRN-CT-2000-00101. The second author was supported by MCyT-Feder research project BFM2001-3489. Both authors express their deep thanks to Manuel Ritoré for his encouragement and helpful comments during the preparation of these notes.

## 2. Preliminaries

### 2.1. The isoperimetric profile

Let $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ be a smooth domain (connected open set) with compact closure $`\overline{\mathrm{\Omega }}`$ contained in a Riemannian manifold $`(M^{n+1},g)`$. The $`(n+1)`$-dimensional and the $`k`$-dimensional Hausdorff measures of a Borel set $`EM`$ will be denoted by $`\mathrm{vol}(E)`$ and $`_k(E)`$ respectively. For any measurable set $`EM`$, let $`𝒫(E,\mathrm{\Omega })`$ be the De Giorgi *perimeter* of $`E`$ *relative to* $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$, defined as

$$𝒫(E,\mathrm{\Omega })=sup\{_E\text{div}Y𝑑_{n+1}:g(Y,Y)1\},$$

where $`Y`$ is a smooth vector field over $`M`$ with compact support contained in $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$, and $`\text{div}Y`$ is the divergence of $`Y`$ \[Ch2, p. 140\]. If, for instance, $`E`$ has $`C^2`$ boundary, then $`𝒫(E,\mathrm{\Omega })=_n(E\mathrm{\Omega })`$ by the Gauss–Green theorem.

A set $`EM`$ is said to be of *finite perimeter in* $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ if $`𝒫(E,\mathrm{\Omega })<\mathrm{}`$. We refer to the reader to \[Gi\], \[Z\] and \[Ch3\] for background about perimeter, sets of finite perimeter, and their use in the context of the Geometric Measure Theory.

The *isoperimetric profile* of $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ is the function $`I_\mathrm{\Omega }:[0,\mathrm{vol}(\mathrm{\Omega })]^+\{0\}`$ given by

$$I_\mathrm{\Omega }(V)=inf\{𝒫(E,\mathrm{\Omega }):E\mathrm{\Omega },\mathrm{vol}(E)=V\},$$

where the infimum is taken over sets of finite perimeter in $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$. We define the *renormalized isoperimetric profile* of $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ as the function $`Y_\mathrm{\Omega }=I_\mathrm{\Omega }^{(n+1)/n}`$.

Through this paper we shall use the following basic properties of the isoperimetric profile

* $`I_\mathrm{\Omega }`$ is a non-negative function which only vanishes at $`V=0`$ and $`V=\mathrm{vol}(\mathrm{\Omega })`$.
* $`I_\mathrm{\Omega }(V)=I_\mathrm{\Omega }(\mathrm{vol}(\mathrm{\Omega })V)`$, $`V[0,\mathrm{vol}(\mathrm{\Omega })]`$.
* $`I_\mathrm{\Omega }`$ is a lower semicontinuous function \[Gi, Theorems 1.9 and 1.19\].

The following proposition is an adaptation of a result by P. Bérard and D. Meyer \[BM, App. C\], in which the cited authors show that the isoperimetric profile of a closed manifold $`(M^{n+1},g)`$ (i.e., a compact Riemannian manifold without boundary) asymptotically approaches the profile of $`^{n+1}`$ for small volumes.

###### Proposition 2.1.

Let $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ be a smooth domain with compact closure and non-empty boundary in a Riemannian manifold $`(M^{n+1},g)`$. Denote by $`^{n+1}`$ the half-space $`\{x_{n+1}>0\}`$ in $`^{n+1}`$. Then, the asymptotic behaviour of the isoperimetric profile of $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ at the origin is

$`I_\mathrm{\Omega }(V)\underset{\begin{array}{c}V0\\ V>0\end{array}}{}I_{^{n+1}}(V)=2^{1/(n+1)}\gamma _{n+1}V^{n/(n+1)},`$
where $`\gamma _{n+1}=_n(𝕊^n)/_{n+1}(B(1))^{n/(n+1)}`$ stands for the $`(n+1)`$-dimensional Euclidean isoperimetric constant.

As a consequence, the right derivative of the renormalized profile at the origin is given by

$$(Y_\mathrm{\Omega })_r^{}(0)=2^{1/n}\gamma _{n+1}^{(n+1)/n}.$$

###### Proof.

The only change with respect to the proof by P. Bérard and D. Meyer that must be taken into account consists in proving a localization lemma as in \[BM, p. 531\] for any small geodesic ball $`B`$ centered at $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ and intersected with $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$. In precise terms, we need to show that inside $`B\mathrm{\Omega }`$ the isoperimetric inequality for the relative perimeter infinitesimally behaves as in $`^{n+1}`$. This property comes from the fact that $`B\mathrm{\Omega }`$ is almost isometric to a half-ball in $`^{n+1}`$ centered at $`^{n+1}`$. Finally, a compactness argument as in \[BM\] allows us to pass from the localization lemmae to a global isoperimetric inequality. ∎

###### Remark 2.2.

The asymptotic behaviour in the proposition above provides upper and lower bounds on the profile for small volumes. In fact, for any $`\epsilon >0`$, there exists $`V(\mathrm{\Omega },\epsilon )>0`$ such that

$$(1\epsilon )I_{^{n+1}}(V)I_\mathrm{\Omega }(V)(1+\epsilon )I_{^{n+1}}(V),\text{ whenever }V(\mathrm{\Omega },\epsilon ).$$

The last inequality and the one given in \[BM, App. C\] imply that a set $`E`$ in $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ such that $`𝒫(E,\mathrm{\Omega })=I_\mathrm{\Omega }(V)`$ for a small volume $`V`$, must touch the boundary of $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$.

Now, we introduce another notion of isoperimetric profile (see \[Gr\], \[Ga\] and \[Ba2\]), which is sometimes more relevant in order to obtain comparison theorems. It is given by the function $`h_\mathrm{\Omega }:[0,1]^+\{0\}`$, defined for all $`\beta `$ in $`[0,1]`$ by

(2.1)
$$h_\mathrm{\Omega }(\beta )=\frac{I_\mathrm{\Omega }\left(\beta \mathrm{vol}(\mathrm{\Omega })\right)}{\mathrm{vol}(\mathrm{\Omega })}.$$

This point of view, which somehow corresponds to the choice of a probability measure on $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$, will be considered in the proof of a Lévy-Gromov type inequality (Theorem 4.8).

### 2.2. Isoperimetric regions: existence and regularity

Let $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ be a smooth domain of a Riemannian manifold $`(M^{n+1},g)`$. An *isoperimetric region* -or simply a *minimizer*\- in $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ for volume $`V(0,\mathrm{vol}(\mathrm{\Omega }))`$ is a set $`E\mathrm{\Omega }`$ such that $`\mathrm{vol}(E)=V`$ and $`𝒫(E,\mathrm{\Omega })=I_\mathrm{\Omega }(V)`$.

In the following proposition we summarize some results from Geometric Measure Theory concerning the existence and regularity of isoperimetric regions in $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$.

###### Proposition 2.3 (\[Gi\], \[GMT\], \[G1\], \[M2\], \[Bo\]).

Let $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ be a smooth domain with compact closure in a Riemannian manifold $`(M^{n+1},g)`$. For any $`V(0,\mathrm{vol}(\mathrm{\Omega }))`$ there is an open set $`E\mathrm{\Omega }`$ which minimizes the perimeter relative to $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ for volume $`V`$. The boundary $`\mathrm{\Lambda }=\overline{E\mathrm{\Omega }}`$ can be written as a disjoint union $`\mathrm{\Sigma }\mathrm{\Sigma }_0`$, where $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ is the regular part of $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ and $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_0=\mathrm{\Lambda }\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ is the set of singularities. Precisely, we have

1. $`\mathrm{\Sigma }\mathrm{\Omega }`$ is a smooth, embedded hypersurface with constant mean curvature.
2. If $`p\mathrm{\Sigma }\mathrm{\Omega }`$, then $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ is a smooth, embedded hypersurface with boundary contained in $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ in a neighborhood of $`p`$; in this neighborhood $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ has constant mean curvature and meets $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ orthogonally.
3. $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_0`$ is a closed set of Hausdorff dimension less than or equal to $`n7`$.
4. At every point $`q\mathrm{\Sigma }_0`$ there is a tangent minimal cone $`CT_qM`$ different from a hyperplane. The square sum $`|\sigma |^2=k_1^2+\mathrm{}+k_n^2`$ of the principal curvatures of $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ tends to $`\mathrm{}`$ when we approach $`q`$ from $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$.

In the preceding proposition the regular set $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ is defined as follows: for $`p\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ there is a neighborhood $`W`$ of $`p`$ in $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ such that $`W`$ is a smooth, embedded hypersurface without boundary or with boundary contained in $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$. Note that a consequence of the proposition above is the absence of interior points in $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ meeting $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ tangentially, see \[G2\].

###### Remark 2.4.

The regular hypersurface $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ associated to a minimizer in $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ need not meet the boundary of $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$. An example illustrating this situation can be found at the end of Section 2 in \[RR\].

### 2.3. An analytic comparison result

Let $`f:I`$ be a function defined on an open interval. For any $`x_0I`$ we denote by $`\overline{D^2f}(x_0)`$ the *upper second derivative* of $`f`$ at $`x_0`$, defined by

(2.2)
$$\overline{D^2f}(x_0)=\underset{h0}{lim\; sup}\frac{f(x_0+h)+f(x_0h)2f(x_0)}{h^2}.$$

The main tool that we shall employ in Section 4 to derive comparison theorems from differential inequalities is the following technical result. A detailed development is included in \[Ba1\] and will appear in a forthcoming paper.

###### Theorem 2.5.

Let $`f,g:[0,a]`$ be continuous functions with positive values on $`(0,a)`$. Let $`H:^+`$ be the function $`H(x)=\alpha \delta x^{(2\alpha )/\alpha }`$, where $`\delta `$ and $`\alpha 2`$. Suppose that $`f`$ satisfies the second order differential inequality

$$\overline{D^2f}(x)H[f(x)],x(0,a),$$

while $`g`$ is a $`C^2`$-function that satisfies the differential equation

$$g^{\prime \prime }(x)=H[g(x)],x(0,a).$$

Then, we have

* If $`f(0)=g(0)`$ and $`f(a)=g(a)`$, then $`fg`$ on $`[0,a]`$. Moreover, if $`f(x_0)=g(x_0)`$ for some $`x_0(0,a)`$, then $`f=g`$ on $`[0,a]`$.
* If $`f(0)=g(0)`$ and the right derivatives at the origin verify $`f_r^{}(0)g_r^{}(0)<+\mathrm{}`$, then $`fg`$ on $`[0,a]`$. Moreover, if $`f(x_0)=g(x_0)`$ for some $`x_0(0,a]`$, then $`f=g`$ on $`[0,x_0]`$.

The theorem above can be seen as a generalization of the fact that a concave function $`f`$ on $`[0,a]`$ is pinched between any tangent line and the secant line passing through $`(0,f(0))`$ and $`(a,f(a))`$.

### 2.4. Convex domains in Riemannian manifolds

The term “convex domain” is used in different non-equivalent ways in the literature. We adopt the following definition:

Let $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ be a domain of a Riemannian manifold $`(M^{n+1},g)`$. We say that $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ is *convex* if any two points $`p,q\mathrm{\Omega }`$ can be joined by a minimizing geodesic of $`M`$ which is contained in $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$. A convex domain $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ with compact closure in $`M`$ will be called a *convex body*.

The convexity of a smooth domain $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ implies the *local convexity* of $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$, which means that all the geodesics in $`M`$ tangent to $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ are locally outside of $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$. As R. Bishop proved (\[Bi\]), the local convexity of $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ is equivalent to an analytic condition (the so-called *infinitesimal convexity*) involving the second fundamental form of $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$. As a consequence, we have

> *A smooth convex domain $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ of a Riemannian manifold $`\text{(}M^{n+1},g\text{)}`$ satisfies that the second fundamental form $`\text{II}_p`$ of $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ with respect to the normal pointing into $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ is positive semidefinite at any $`p\mathrm{\Omega }`$*”.

###### Remark 2.6.

Most of the results of the paper in which the convexity of $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ is assumed are also valid under the weaker condition that $`\text{II}_p`$ is positive semidefinite at any $`p\mathrm{\Omega }`$.

The following result is an application to the setting of convex bodies of two well-known comparison theorems in Riemannian Geometry. It will be useful in order to show that our isoperimetric inequalities in Section 4 are sharp.

###### Theorem 2.7.

Let $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ be a smooth convex domain of a complete Riemannian manifold $`(M^{n+1},g)`$. Denote by $`_\delta ^{n+1}`$ the $`(n+1)`$-dimensional half-sphere of radius $`1/\sqrt{\delta }`$. If the Ricci curvature of $`M`$ satisfies $`\mathrm{Ric}n\delta >0`$ on $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$, then

* $`\overline{\mathrm{\Omega }}`$ is compact and $`\text{diam}(\mathrm{\Omega })\pi /\sqrt{\delta }`$ *(*Bonnet–Myers Theorem*)*.
* If $`\mathrm{\Omega }\mathrm{}`$ then $`\mathrm{vol}(\mathrm{\Omega })\mathrm{vol}(_\delta ^{n+1})`$ and equality implies that $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ is totally geodesic in $`M`$ and $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ is isometric to $`_\delta ^{n+1}`$ *(*Bishop’s Theorem*)*.

###### Proof.

Assertion (i) is a consequence of the Bonnet–Myers theorem (\[Ch2, Theorem 2.12\]). Now we give an outline of the proof of (ii) which follows the arguments in \[Ch2, Theorem 3.9\]. Fix $`p\mathrm{\Omega }`$ and call $`\nu `$ to the unit normal vector to $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ at $`p`$ pointing into $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$. Denote $`\nu ^+=\{\eta T_pM:g_p(\eta ,\eta )=1,g_p(\eta ,\nu )>0\}`$. For any $`\eta \nu ^+`$ let $`\gamma _\eta `$ be the unique geodesic in $`M`$ such that $`\gamma _\eta (0)=p`$ and $`\gamma _\eta ^{}(0)=\eta `$. Let also denote

$`c(\eta )`$ $`=sup\{t>0:\text{dist}(p,\gamma _\eta (t))=t\},`$
$`d(\eta )`$ $`=sup\{t>0:\gamma _\eta ((0,t])\mathrm{\Omega }\}.`$
Let $`C(p)`$ be the cut locus of $`p`$ in $`M`$. By the convexity of $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ we have

$$\mathrm{\Omega }C(p)=\{\gamma _\eta (t):\eta \nu ^+,t(0,m(\eta ))\},$$

where $`m(\eta )=\mathrm{min}\{c(\eta ),d(\eta )\}`$ is continuous as function of $`\eta \nu ^+`$. Call $`J(t,\eta )`$ to the Jacobian determinant of the map $`(t,\eta )(0,\mathrm{})\times \nu ^+\gamma _\eta (t)`$. By using the integration formula for polar geodesic coordinates around $`p`$ and Bishop’s Theorem \[Ch2, Theorem 3.8\], we get

(2.3) $`\mathrm{vol}(\mathrm{\Omega })`$ $`={\displaystyle _{\nu ^+}}\left({\displaystyle _0^{m(\eta )}}J(t,\eta )𝑑t\right)𝑑\eta {\displaystyle _{\nu ^+}}\left({\displaystyle _0^{m(\eta )}}S_\delta (t)^n𝑑t\right)𝑑\eta `$
$`{\displaystyle _{\nu ^+}}\left({\displaystyle _0^{\pi /\sqrt{\delta }}}S_\delta (t)^n𝑑t\right)𝑑\eta =\mathrm{vol}(_\delta ^{n+1}),`$
where $`S_\delta (t)=\mathrm{sin}(\sqrt{\delta }t)/\sqrt{\delta }`$ and we have used (i) to write $`m(\eta )\pi /\sqrt{\delta }`$.

If equality holds in (2.3), then $`m(\eta )=\pi /\sqrt{\delta }`$ for all $`\eta \nu ^+`$ and $`\mathrm{\Omega }C(p)`$ has constant sectional curvature $`\delta `$ with respect to any plane containing a tangent vector to a geodesic $`\gamma _\eta `$. As consequence, $`\mathrm{\Omega }C(p)`$ is a geodesic half-ball $`B`$ centered at $`p`$ with radius $`\pi /\sqrt{\delta }`$ and we deduce, as in the local Cartan’s theorem \[Ch2, Exercise 3.1\], that $`B`$ is isometric to $`_\delta ^{n+1}`$. From this, it is easy to see that $`\mathrm{\Omega }C(p)=\mathrm{}`$ and $`\mathrm{\Omega }=\{\gamma _\eta (t):\eta T_p(\mathrm{\Omega }),t[0,\pi /\sqrt{\delta }]\}`$. ∎

###### Remark 2.8.

In the theorem above we assume $`\mathrm{Ric}n\delta >0`$ only in $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$. In Section 4 we shall see that the two geometric inequalities in Theorem 2.7 can be obtained by using isoperimetric comparisons. In Theorem 4.13 we characterize the half-spheres as the only convex domains for which equality in Theorem 2.7 (i) holds.

## 3. The differential inequality

Let $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ be a smooth convex body of a Riemannian manifold $`(M^{n+1},g)`$. Our main goal in this section is to prove that the renormalized isoperimetric profile $`Y_\mathrm{\Omega }`$ satisfies a differential inequality as that as in (1.1). We shall then derive some immediate consequences related to the regularity of the profile and the connectivity of isoperimetric regions in $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$.

Let us start with the proof of the differential inequality. As we pointed out in Section 1, the idea of the proof consists in a local comparison of $`Y_\mathrm{\Omega }`$ with the relative profiles associated to “almost parallel variations” of a minimizer $`E`$ in $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ for a fixed volume $`V_0`$. These variations will be constructed by using the following lemma

###### Lemma 3.1.

Let $`E`$ be an isoperimetric region inside a smooth domain $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ with compact closure in a Riemannian manifold $`(M^{n+1},g)`$. Denote by $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ the regular part of $`\mathrm{\Lambda }=\overline{E\mathrm{\Omega }}`$. Then, there is a sequence $`\{\phi _\epsilon :\mathrm{\Sigma }\}_{\epsilon >0}`$ of smooth functions with compact support in $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$, such that

* $`0\phi _\epsilon 1`$, $`\epsilon >0`$.
* $`\{\phi _\epsilon \}1`$ in the Sobolev space $`H^1(\mathrm{\Sigma })`$, that is

$$\underset{\epsilon 0}{lim}_\mathrm{\Sigma }\phi _\epsilon ^2𝑑_n=𝒫(E,\mathrm{\Omega }),\underset{\epsilon 0}{lim}_\mathrm{\Sigma }|\phi _\epsilon |^2𝑑_n=0,$$

where $`\phi _\epsilon `$ is the gradient of $`\phi _\epsilon `$ relative to $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$.
* $`lim_{\epsilon 0}\phi _\epsilon (p)=1`$, $`p\mathrm{\Sigma }`$.

A complete proof of the lemma above when $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ is a Euclidean domain can be found in \[SZ2, Lemma 2.4\]. The general case is treated in a similar way, see \[MR\] and \[Ba2, Proposition 1.1\] for further details. In \[MR, Lemma 3.1\] it was shown that the existence of $`\{\phi _\epsilon \}_{\epsilon >0}`$ is guaranteed for a bounded, constant mean curvature hypersurface $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ with a closed singular set $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_0=\overline{\mathrm{\Sigma }}\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ such that $`_{n2}(\mathrm{\Sigma }_0)=0`$ or consisting of isolated points.

Now, we can prove the main result of this section. Recall that $`\overline{D^2f}(x_0)`$ denotes the upper second derivative of a function $`f`$ at $`x_0`$, as defined in (2.2).

###### Theorem 3.2.

Let $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ be a smooth convex body of a Riemannian manifold $`(M^{n+1},g)`$. Suppose that the Ricci curvature of $`M`$ satisfies $`\mathrm{Ric}n\delta `$ on $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$. Then, the renormalized isoperimetric profile $`Y_\mathrm{\Omega }=I_\mathrm{\Omega }^{(n+1)/n}`$ verifies

(3.1)
$$\overline{D^2Y_\mathrm{\Omega }}(V)(n+1)\delta Y_\mathrm{\Omega }(V)^{(1n)/(1+n)},V(0,\mathrm{vol}(\mathrm{\Omega })).$$

If equality holds for some $`V_0(0,\mathrm{vol}(\mathrm{\Omega }))`$ then the boundary $`\mathrm{\Lambda }=\overline{E\mathrm{\Omega }}`$ of any minimizer $`E`$ in $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ of volume $`V_0`$ is a smooth, totally umbilical hypersurface such that

$$\text{Ric}(N,N)n\delta \text{ on }\mathrm{\Lambda }\text{ and }\text{II}(N,N)0\text{ on }\mathrm{\Lambda }\mathrm{\Omega },$$

where $`N`$ is the unit normal to $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ which points into $`E`$, and *II* is the second fundamental form of $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ with respect to the inner normal.

Moreover, if $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ coincides with the half-space $`_\delta ^{n+1}`$ in the simply connected space form with constant sectional curvature $`\delta `$, then equality holds in (3.1) for any $`V(0,\mathrm{vol}(\mathrm{\Omega }))`$.

###### Proof.

Fix $`V_0(0,\mathrm{vol}(\mathrm{\Omega }))`$. By Proposition 2.3 there is a minimizer $`E`$ in $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ of volume $`V_0`$. By the same result, the regular part $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ of $`\mathrm{\Lambda }=\overline{E\mathrm{\Omega }}`$ is a smooth, embedded hypersurface which meets $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ orthogonally. The mean curvature of $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ with respect to the unit normal $`N`$ pointing into $`E`$ is a constant $`H_0`$. The boundary $`\mathrm{\Sigma }\mathrm{\Omega }`$ could be empty, see Remark 2.4. In this case, we adopt the convention that the integrals over $`\mathrm{\Sigma }\mathrm{\Omega }`$ are all equal to $`0`$.

Consider a sequence of functions $`\{\phi _\epsilon \}_{\epsilon >0}`$ as obtained in Lemma 3.1. Fix $`\epsilon >0`$ and take a smooth vector field $`X_\epsilon `$ with compact support over $`M`$, such that $`X_\epsilon (q)T_q(\mathrm{\Omega })`$ whenever $`q\mathrm{\Omega }`$ and $`X_\epsilon =\phi _\epsilon N`$ in $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$. The flow of diffeomorphisms $`\{\varphi _t\}_{t(\gamma ,\gamma )}`$ of $`X_\epsilon `$ in $`\overline{\mathrm{\Omega }}`$ induces a variation $`\{E_t=\varphi _t(E)\}_t`$ of $`E`$ through sets of finite perimeter contained in $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$. Call $`𝒫_\epsilon (t)=𝒫(E_t,\mathrm{\Omega })`$ and $`V_\epsilon (t)=\mathrm{vol}(E_t)`$. By the first variation for perimeter and volume

(3.2) $`𝒫_\epsilon ^{}(0)`$ $`={\displaystyle _\mathrm{\Sigma }}\text{div}_\mathrm{\Sigma }X_\epsilon 𝑑_n={\displaystyle _\mathrm{\Sigma }}nH_0\phi _\epsilon 𝑑_n,`$
(3.3) $`V_\epsilon ^{}(0)`$ $`={\displaystyle _E}\text{div}X_\epsilon 𝑑_{n+1}={\displaystyle _\mathrm{\Sigma }}\phi _\epsilon 𝑑_n,`$
where $`\text{div}_\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ is the divergence relative to $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$. As $`V_\epsilon ^{}(0)<0`$, we can write $`t`$ as a function of the volume $`V=V(t)`$ for $`V`$ close to $`V_0`$; hence, we can define $`𝒫_\epsilon (V)=𝒫_\epsilon [t(V)]`$.

Now, consider the function $`g_\epsilon (V)=𝒫_\epsilon (V)^{(n+1)/n}`$ defined on a neighborhood of $`V_0`$. By using the definition of isoperimetric profile and the fact that $`E`$ is a minimizer, it is clear that

$$Y_\mathrm{\Omega }(V)g_\epsilon (V),Y_\mathrm{\Omega }(V_0)=g_\epsilon (V_0),$$

from which we deduce

(3.4)
$$\overline{D^2Y_\mathrm{\Omega }}(V_0)\overline{D^2g_\epsilon }(V_0)=\left(\frac{n+1}{n}\right)𝒫_\epsilon (V_0)^{1/n}\left\{\frac{1}{n}𝒫_\epsilon ^{}(V_0)^2𝒫_\epsilon (V_0)^1+𝒫_\epsilon ^{\prime \prime }(V_0)\right\}.$$

Now, we shall compute the derivatives $`𝒫_\epsilon ^{}(V_0)`$ and $`𝒫_\epsilon ^{\prime \prime }(V_0)`$. The first one is calculated by using (3.2) and (3.3). We get

(3.5)
$$𝒫_\epsilon ^{}(V_0)=𝒫_\epsilon ^{}(0)V_\epsilon ^{}(0)^1=nH_0.$$

On the other hand, the calculation of $`𝒫_\epsilon ^{\prime \prime }(V_0)`$ requires second variation of perimeter and volume. By following the proof of \[SZ2, Theorem 2.5\] (in fact, the only change is that a new term involving the Ricci curvature appears), it is obtained

(3.6) $`𝒫_\epsilon ^{\prime \prime }(V_0)`$ $`=\left({\displaystyle _\mathrm{\Sigma }}\phi _\epsilon 𝑑_n\right)^2`$
$`\times \left[{\displaystyle _\mathrm{\Sigma }}(|\phi _\epsilon |^2(\mathrm{Ric}(N,N)+|\sigma |^2)\phi _\epsilon ^2)𝑑_n{\displaystyle _{\mathrm{\Sigma }\mathrm{\Omega }}}\text{II}(N,N)\phi _\epsilon ^2𝑑_{n1}\right],`$
where $`|\sigma |^2`$ is the squared sum of the principal curvatures of $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ with respect to $`N`$, and II is the second fundamental form of $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ with respect to the inner normal.

Now, if we take $`lim\; sup`$ in the equality above when $`\epsilon 0`$ and we use Lemma 3.1 together with Fatou’s Lemma, we have

(3.7) $`\underset{\epsilon 0}{lim\; sup}𝒫_\epsilon ^{\prime \prime }(V_0)`$ $`𝒫(E,\mathrm{\Omega })^2\left[{\displaystyle _\mathrm{\Sigma }}\left(\text{Ric}(N,N)+|\sigma |^2\right)𝑑_n+{\displaystyle _{\mathrm{\Sigma }\mathrm{\Omega }}}\text{II}(N,N)𝑑_{n1}\right]`$
$`n(\delta +H_0^2)𝒫(E,\mathrm{\Omega })^1,`$
where in the last inequality we have used the assumption on the Ricci curvature, the well-known inequality $`|\sigma |^2nH_0^2`$, and the convexity of $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$.

Thus, if we pass to the limit in (3.4) and we use (3.5) together with (3.7), we deduce

(3.8) $`\overline{D^2Y_\mathrm{\Omega }}(V_0)`$ $`\left({\displaystyle \frac{n+1}{n}}\right)𝒫(E,\mathrm{\Omega })^{1/n}\left\{nH_0^2𝒫(E,\mathrm{\Omega })^1+\underset{\epsilon 0}{lim\; sup}𝒫_\epsilon ^{\prime \prime }(V_0)\right\}`$
$`(n+1)\delta 𝒫(E,\mathrm{\Omega })^{(1n)/n}=(n+1)\delta Y_\mathrm{\Omega }(V_0)^{(1n)/(1+n)},`$
and (3.1) is proved. Moreover, if equality holds in (3.8) then we also have equality in (3.7), and so $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ is totally umbilical, $`\mathrm{Ric}(N,N)n\delta `$ on $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$, and $`\text{II}(N,N)0`$ on $`\mathrm{\Sigma }\mathrm{\Omega }`$. Furthermore, the singular set $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_0=\mathrm{\Lambda }\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ is empty by Proposition 2.3 (iv) since $`|\sigma |^2`$ is bounded.

Finally, suppose that $`\mathrm{\Omega }=_\delta ^{n+1}`$. By reflecting with respect to $`_\delta ^{n+1}`$ we get that any minimizer in $`_\delta ^{n+1}`$ is obtained by intersecting a geodesic ball $`B`$ centered at $`_\delta ^{n+1}`$ with $`_\delta ^{n+1}`$. As $`B`$ is a totally umbilical hypersurface and $`_\delta ^{n+1}`$ is totally geodesic, we have equality in (3.7). On the other hand, equality holds in the first inequality of (3.8) since $`Y_{_\delta ^{n+1}}`$ equals the renormalized profile $`𝒫(V)^{(n+1)/n}`$ given by parallel hypersurfaces to $`B_\delta ^{n+1}`$. ∎

###### Remark 3.3.

By using the profile $`h_\mathrm{\Omega }`$ defined in (2.1) we easily see that Theorem 3.2 is also valid for the renormalized profile $`y_\mathrm{\Omega }=h_\mathrm{\Omega }^{(n+1)/n}`$. In particular,

(3.9)
$$\overline{D^2y_\mathrm{\Omega }}(\beta )(n+1)\delta y_\mathrm{\Omega }(\beta )^{(1n)/(1+n)},\beta (0,1),$$

with equality for all $`\beta (0,1)`$ when $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ coincides with $`_\delta ^{n+1}`$ $`(\delta >0)`$.

###### Remark 3.4.

Let $`M`$ be a closed Riemannian manifold with $`\mathrm{Ric}n\delta `$. Then, $`M`$ can be seen as a convex body $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ with $`\mathrm{\Omega }=\mathrm{}`$, and the proof of (3.1) remains valid with the only change that the terms involving $`\mathrm{\Sigma }\mathrm{\Omega }`$ vanish. With a similar proof, V. Bayle \[Ba2, Theorem 1.1\] proved that (3.1) holds for the renormalized profile $`y_M=h_M^{(n+1)/n}`$. Another type of differential inequality for the isoperimetric profile $`I_M`$ was previously established by F. Morgan and D. Johnson \[MJ, Proposition 3.3\].

The remainder of this section is devoted to deduce some immediate consequences of Theorem 3.2.

One of the easiest and most obvious applications of the differential inequality (3.1) is the following theorem. The proof only uses the fact that a lower semicontinuous function on an interval $`f:I`$ such that $`\overline{D^2f}0`$ in the interior of $`I`$ must be concave (\[Ba1\]).

###### Theorem 3.5.

Let $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ be a smooth convex body of a Riemannian manifold $`(M^{n+1},g)`$ with non-negative Ricci curvature. Then, the renormalized profile of $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ is concave. As consequence, the isoperimetric profile $`I_\mathrm{\Omega }`$ is concave and, therefore, increasing on $`[0,\mathrm{vol}(\mathrm{\Omega })/2]`$.

###### Remark 3.6.

The concavity of the profile of a smooth convex body $`\mathrm{\Omega }^{n+1}`$ was obtained by P. Sternberg and K. Zumbrun \[SZ2, Theorem 2.8\]. The observation that, in fact, the renormalized profile of $`\mathrm{\Omega }^{n+1}`$ is concave is due to E. Kuwert \[K\].

Now, we generalize to the setting of convex bodies the regularity properties obtained for the isoperimetric profile of a closed Riemannian manifold (see \[BP\], \[MJ\] and \[Ba2\]). As an analytic outcome of Theorem 3.5 we have that, under non-negative Ricci curvature, the isoperimetric profile of $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ has the regularity properties of concave functions. In the following proposition we show that no assumption on the Ricci curvature is needed.

###### Proposition 3.7.

Let $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ be a smooth convex body of a Riemannian manifold $`(M^{n+1},g)`$. Then the renormalized isoperimetric profile $`Y_\mathrm{\Omega }`$ has left and right derivatives satisfying

$$(Y_\mathrm{\Omega })_l^{}(V)(Y_\mathrm{\Omega })_r^{}(V),V(0,\mathrm{vol}(\mathrm{\Omega })).$$

As a consequence, $`(Y_\mathrm{\Omega })_l^{}(\mathrm{vol}(\mathrm{\Omega })/2)`$ is non-negative. Moreover, $`Y_\mathrm{\Omega }`$ is differentiable on the interval $`(0,\mathrm{vol}(\mathrm{\Omega }))`$ except on an at most countable set.

As to the isoperimetric profile $`I_\mathrm{\Omega }`$, it has left and right derivatives for every $`V`$ in $`(0,\mathrm{vol}(\mathrm{\Omega }))`$, such that

$$(I_\mathrm{\Omega })_l^{}(V)nH_E(I_\mathrm{\Omega })_r^{}(V),$$

where $`H_E`$ is the inward mean curvature associated to a minimizer $`E`$ in $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ of volume $`V`$. As a consequence, $`(I_\mathrm{\Omega })_l^{}(\mathrm{vol}(\mathrm{\Omega })/2)`$ is non-negative. Furthermore, $`I_\mathrm{\Omega }`$ is differentiable on $`(0,\mathrm{vol}(\mathrm{\Omega }))`$ except on an at most countable set.

###### Proof.

The regularity properties and the inequality between the side derivatives come from the differential inequality (3.1), which implies that locally around $`V_0(0,\mathrm{vol}(\mathrm{\Omega }))`$ the renormalized profile $`Y_\mathrm{\Omega }`$ is concave, up to the addition of a constant times $`(VV_0)^2`$. Now fix $`V_0(0,\mathrm{vol}(\mathrm{\Omega }))`$ and take a minimizer $`E`$ in $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ of volume $`V_0`$. Let $`𝒫(V)`$ be the relative profile associated to an almost parallel variation of $`E`$ as constructed in the proof of Theorem 3.2. It is obvious that $`I_\mathrm{\Omega }(V)𝒫(V)`$ for $`V`$ close to $`V_0`$, and $`I_\mathrm{\Omega }(V_0)=𝒫(V_0)`$. As $`𝒫^{}(V_0)=nH_E`$ (see (3.5)) we deduce that $`(I_\mathrm{\Omega })_l^{}(V_0)nH_E(I_\mathrm{\Omega })_r^{}(V_0)`$. ∎

###### Remark 3.8.

The asymptotic behaviour of the profile given in Proposition 2.1 allows us to deduce the following consequences from Proposition 3.7

* $`I_\mathrm{\Omega }`$ is continuous on $`[0,\mathrm{vol}(\mathrm{\Omega })]`$.
* $`lim_{V0}(I_\mathrm{\Omega })_r^{}(V)=+\mathrm{}`$.
* The inward mean curvature associated to a minimizer in $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ explodes when the enclosed volume tends to zero.

We finish this section by showing some topological restrictions related to the connectivity of minimizers inside a convex body. We derive them by using a well-known argument (see \[SZ2\] and \[MJ\]), which relies on the second variation formula of perimeter (3.6).

###### Proposition 3.9.

Let $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ be a smooth convex body of a Riemannian manifold $`(M^{n+1},g)`$ such that $`\mathrm{Ric}n\delta `$ on $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$. Denote by *II* the second fundamental form of $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ with respect to the inner normal. Let $`E`$ be an isoperimetric region in $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$, $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ the regular part of $`\overline{E\mathrm{\Omega }}`$, and $`N`$ the normal to $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ pointing into $`E`$. Then

* If $`\delta >0`$, then $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ is connected.
* If $`\delta =0`$ and $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ consists of more than one component, then $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ is totally geodesic and we have $`\mathrm{Ric}(N,N)0`$ in $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ and $`\text{II}(N,N)0`$ in $`\mathrm{\Sigma }\mathrm{\Omega }`$. As consequence, if $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ is non-connected, and $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ is strictly convex in the sense that $`\text{II}>0`$, then $`\mathrm{\Sigma }\mathrm{\Omega }=\mathrm{}`$.
* If $`\delta 0`$, then there exists $`V_1(0,\mathrm{vol}(\mathrm{\Omega }))`$ such that $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ is connected if $`\mathrm{vol}(E)V_1`$.

###### Proof.

Call $`V_0=\mathrm{vol}(E)`$ and denote by $`H_0`$ the mean curvature of $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ with respect to $`N`$. Let $`\mathrm{\Sigma }^{}`$ be a component of $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ and $`\{\phi _\epsilon \}C_0^{\mathrm{}}(\mathrm{\Sigma }^{})`$ a sequence as in Lemma 3.1. By following the proof of Theorem 3.2 we consider almost parallel variations of $`E`$ and the associated perimeter functions $`𝒫_\epsilon (V)`$. Call $`\alpha (V_0)=lim\; sup_{\epsilon 0}𝒫_\epsilon ^{\prime \prime }(V_0)`$. From (3.7) we know that

(\*) $`\alpha (V_0)n(\delta +H_0^2)𝒫(E,\mathrm{\Omega })^1`$,

due to the hypothesis on the Ricci curvature, the convexity of $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ and the inequality $`|\sigma |^2nH_0^2`$.

We assert that $`\alpha (V_0)<0`$ implies that $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ is connected. Otherwise, we would use almost parallel variations with $`\epsilon 0`$ to expand one component $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_1`$ and shrink another one $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_2`$ so that the resulting variation preserves volume while reducing perimeter, see \[SZ2, Theorem 2.6\] for details; this would give us a contradiction with the minimality of $`E`$.

Now we distinguish two cases. If $`\delta 0`$, then $`\alpha (V_0)0`$ and an easy discussion of equality cases in (\*) proves the claim. If $`\delta 0`$, then the explosion of the mean curvature for small volumes (Remark 3.8 (iii)) yields the existence of $`V_1`$ such that $`\alpha (V)<0`$ for $`V[0,V_1]`$. ∎

###### Remark 3.10.

Topological restrictions on isoperimetric hypersurfaces inside a Euclidean convex body were obtained by A. Ros and E. Vergasta \[RV\] and by P. Sternberg and K. Zumbrun \[SZ2\]. On the one hand, statement (ii) in the proposition above is proved in \[SZ2, Theorem 2.6\] for a convex body $`\mathrm{\Omega }^{n+1}`$. Furthermore, it is shown that strict convexity of $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ implies that $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ is connected. We must point out that, in general, this cannot be achieved when $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ is not a Euclidean domain since $`\mathrm{\Sigma }\mathrm{\Omega }`$ could be empty, see Remark 2.4. On the other hand, in \[RV, Theorem 5\] some conditions on the genus $`g`$ and the number $`r`$ of boundary components of $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ are obtained when $`\mathrm{\Omega }^3`$. In precise terms, they proved that the only possible values for $`g`$ and $`r`$ are

* $`g=0`$ and $`r=1,2`$ or $`3`$;
* $`g=2`$ or $`3`$ and $`r=1`$.

It has been recently conjectured that an isoperimetric hypersurface inside a strictly convex body of $`^3`$ must be homeomorphic to a disk (\[Ro\]).

Let $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ be a smooth convex body of a Riemannian manifold and let $`n\delta `$ be a lower bound on the Ricci curvature of $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$. By Proposition 3.9 we have that a minimizer $`E`$ in $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ is connected when $`\delta >0`$, or when $`\delta 0`$ and $`\mathrm{vol}(E)`$ is small enough. At first, the second variation of perimeter is not sufficient, in the case $`\delta 0`$, to discard a minimizer with finitely many components bounded by totally geodesic hypersurfaces. However, by using that the profile is concave when $`\delta =0`$ we can prove

###### Proposition 3.11.

Let $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ be a smooth convex body of a Riemannian manifold with non-negative Ricci curvature. Then, isoperimetric regions in $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ are connected.

###### Proof.

Suppose that $`E`$ is a minimizer of volume $`V_0(0,\mathrm{vol}(\mathrm{\Omega }))`$ and that $`E_1`$ is a connected component of $`E`$ with volume $`V_1<V_0`$. By the definition of isoperimetric profile and the fact that the set of singularities in $`\overline{E\mathrm{\Omega }}`$ does not contribute to perimeter, we get

$$I_\mathrm{\Omega }(V_0)=𝒫(E,\mathrm{\Omega })=𝒫(E_1,\mathrm{\Omega })+𝒫(EE_1,\mathrm{\Omega })I_\mathrm{\Omega }(V_1)+I_\mathrm{\Omega }(V_0V_1).$$

On the other hand, the concavity of $`Y_\mathrm{\Omega }`$ (Theorem 3.5) gives us

$$Y_\mathrm{\Omega }(V_0)Y_\mathrm{\Omega }(V_1)+Y_\mathrm{\Omega }(V_0V_1),$$

and so, as $`I_\mathrm{\Omega }(V_1)`$ and $`I_\mathrm{\Omega }(V_0V_1)`$ are positive, and since the function $`xx^{\frac{n}{n+1}}`$ is strictly concave, we deduce

$$I_\mathrm{\Omega }(V_0)<I_\mathrm{\Omega }(V_1)+I_\mathrm{\Omega }(V_0V_1),$$

which leads us to a contradiction. This proves that $`V_1=V_0`$, and $`E`$ is therefore connected. ∎

## 4. Comparison theorems

In this section, we shall integrate the differential inequality (3.1) in order to prove comparison theorems for the isoperimetric profile of a smooth convex body $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ in a Riemannian manifold $`(M^{n+1},g)`$. The underlying philosophy of these results consists in using the analytic Theorem 2.5 to compare a profile $`f`$, which can be $`Y_\mathrm{\Omega }`$ or the function $`y_\mathrm{\Omega }`$ defined in Remark 3.3, with a solution $`g`$ of the differential equation associated to (3.1) having the same initial conditions or the same boundary values as $`f`$. In the first case we shall obtain an upper bound for the profile $`I_\mathrm{\Omega }`$, while in the second one, we shall deduce a lower bound for $`h_\mathrm{\Omega }`$ that can be interpreted as a Lévy-Gromov type inequality. We must remark that both comparisons are quite different although they arise from the same differential inequality. A detailed analysis of equality cases will allow us to deduce global geometric consequences on $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$.

Through this section we also illustrate how to use our isoperimetric inequalities to deduce other geometric an analytic comparisons. In this way, we give alternative proofs of the inequalities in Theorem 2.7, and we characterize the half-spheres as the only convex domains for which equality in Theorem 2.7 (i) holds. Finally, we prove a comparison result for the first non-zero Neumann eigenvalue of the Laplace operator on $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ that can be seen as a generalization of the Obata–Lichnerowicz theorem \[Ch, Theorem 9, p. 82\].

### 4.1. Upper bounds on the isoperimetric profile

###### Theorem 4.1.

Let $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ be a smooth convex body with non-empty boundary of a complete Riemannian manifold $`(M^{n+1},g)`$. Suppose that the Ricci curvature of $`M`$ satisfies $`\mathrm{Ric}n\delta `$ on $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$. Then

(4.1)
$$I_\mathrm{\Omega }(V)I_{_\delta ^{n+1}}(V),V[0,\mathrm{vol}(\mathrm{\Omega })],$$

where $`_\delta ^{n+1}`$ is a half-space in the $`(n+1)`$-dimensional simply connected space form with constant sectional curvature $`\delta `$.

If equality holds in (4.1) for some $`V_0(0,\mathrm{vol}(\mathrm{\Omega })]`$, then $`I_\mathrm{\Omega }=I_{_\delta ^{n+1}}`$ on $`[0,V_0]`$, and the boundary $`\overline{E\mathrm{\Omega }}`$ of any minimizer $`E`$ in $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ of volume $`V(0,V_0)`$ is a smooth, totally umbilical hypersurface. Moreover, if $`V_0=\mathrm{vol}(\mathrm{\Omega })`$ *(*which implies $`\delta >0`$*)* then $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ is isometric to $`_\delta ^{n+1}`$.

###### Proof.

The comparison arises from the fact that a continuous solution of the differential inequality (3.1) is bounded from above by a solution of the differential equation

(4.2)
$$f^{\prime \prime }=(n+1)\delta f^{(1n)/(1+n)}$$

with the same initial conditions (Theorem 2.5). Then, by using that the renormalized profile of $`_\delta ^{n+1}`$ satisfies (4.2) (see Theorem 3.2) and taking into account the asymptotic behaviour of the renormalized profile $`Y_\mathrm{\Omega }`$ at the origin (Proposition 2.1), we obtain

(4.3)
$$Y_\mathrm{\Omega }(V)Y_{_\delta ^{n+1}}(V),V[0,\mathrm{min}\{\mathrm{vol}(\mathrm{\Omega }),\mathrm{vol}(_\delta ^{n+1})\}].$$

From the inequality above we get (4.1) once we show that $`\mathrm{vol}(\mathrm{\Omega })\mathrm{vol}(_\delta ^{n+1})`$. This volume comparison is trivial if $`\delta 0`$ while in the case $`\delta >0`$, the opposite inequality would allow us to deduce from (4.3) that $`Y_\mathrm{\Omega }(\mathrm{vol}(_\delta ^{n+1}))0`$, which is a contradiction since the profile is positive in $`(0,\mathrm{vol}(\mathrm{\Omega }))`$.

Finally, if both profiles coincide at $`V_0(0,\mathrm{vol}(\mathrm{\Omega })]`$ then they must coincide in $`[0,V_0]`$ by Theorem 2.5. The umbilicality of a minimizer of volume $`V<V_0`$ follows from the discussion, given in Theorem 3.2, of equality cases in (3.1). If $`V_0=\mathrm{vol}(\mathrm{\Omega })`$ then $`\mathrm{vol}(\mathrm{\Omega })=\mathrm{vol}(_\delta ^{n+1})`$ and $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ is isometric to $`_\delta ^{n+1}`$ by Theorem 2.7 (ii). ∎

###### Remark 4.2.

Note that we have given another proof of the volume comparison $`\mathrm{vol}(\mathrm{\Omega })\mathrm{vol}(_\delta ^{n+1})`$ of Theorem 2.7 (ii) by using the isoperimetric inequality (4.3).

###### Remark 4.3.

When $`n=1`$ the differential inequality (3.1) turns out to be linear and Theorem 4.1 follows since the function $`E(V)=Y_\mathrm{\Omega }(V)Y_{_\delta ^2}(V)`$ is concave on $`[0,\mathrm{vol}(\mathrm{\Omega })]`$ and the tangent line at the origin coincides with the $`x`$-axis. After an explicit calculation of $`Y_{_\delta ^2}`$, inequality (4.1) reads

$$I_\mathrm{\Omega }^2(V)V(2\pi \delta V),V[0,\mathrm{vol}(\mathrm{\Omega })].$$

###### Remark 4.4.

For a closed Riemannian manifold $`M`$ with $`\mathrm{Ric}n\delta `$ the integration of the differential inequality (3.1) would give us the comparison

(4.4)
$$I_MI_{𝕄_\delta ^{n+1}},V[0,\mathrm{vol}(M)],$$

where $`𝕄_\delta ^{n+1}`$ stands for the $`(n+1)`$-dimensional simply connected space form with constant sectional curvature $`\delta `$. This result was previously proved by F. Morgan and D. Johnson \[MJ, Theorem 3.4\].

###### Remark 4.5.

Inequality (4.1) is also valid for a smooth, unbounded, convex domain $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ with non-empty boundary and $`\mathrm{Ric}n\delta `$. This can be proved by showing, as was done in \[MJ, Theorem 3.5\] for closed Riemannian manifolds, that the perimeter in $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ of a “half-ball” $`B=\mathrm{\Omega }B(p,r)`$ centered at a point $`p\mathrm{\Omega }`$ is less than or equal to the area of the geodesic half-ball $`\stackrel{~}{B}`$ in $`_\delta ^{n+1}`$ of the same volume, with equality only if $`B`$ is isometric to $`\stackrel{~}{B}`$ and $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ is geodesic at $`p`$. The arguments in the proof by F. Morgan and D. Johnson rely on comparison theorems involving the volume of metric balls (\[Ch2, Theorem 3.9\]) and the area of metric spheres (\[Ch2, Proposition 3.3\]). These theorems do not use the compactness of the ambient manifold and can be generalized to our setting by following the scheme in the proof of Theorem 2.7.

This alternative proof of (4.1) also allows us to deduce geometric consequences on $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ when we have equality in (4.1). We summarize them in the next result

###### Theorem 4.6.

Let $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ be a smooth convex domain with $`\mathrm{Ric}n\delta `$ in a complete Riemannian manifold $`(M^{n+1},g)`$. Then

* If $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ has non-empty boundary then (4.1) holds, and equality for some $`V_0(0,\mathrm{vol}(\mathrm{\Omega })]`$ implies that $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ is totally geodesic in $`M`$ and $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ has constant sectional curvature $`\delta `$ in a neighborhood of $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$.
* If $`\mathrm{\Omega }=\mathrm{}`$ then (4.4) holds, and equality for some $`V_0(0,\mathrm{vol}(\mathrm{\Omega })]`$ implies that $`M`$ is isometric to a quotient of the simply connected space form $`𝕄_\delta ^{n+1}`$ with constant sectional curvature $`\delta `$.

###### Remark 4.7.

In general, we cannot improve statement (i) in the theorem above to the stronger conclusion that equality in (4.1) for some $`V_0`$ implies that $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ has constant sectional curvature $`\delta `$. For example, denote by $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ the domain obtained from attaching the half-sphere of $`𝕊^2`$ centered at the north pole to the compact cylinder $`𝕊^1\times [1,0]`$ through the circle $`𝕊^1\times \{0\}`$. It is clear that $`I_\mathrm{\Omega }=I_{_0^2}`$ for small values; however, $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ is not a flat domain.

### 4.2. A Lévy-Gromov type inequality for convex bodies

Let $`(M^{n+1},g)`$ be a closed Riemannian manifold with $`\mathrm{Ric}n\delta >0`$. Denote by $`h_M`$ the profile of $`M`$ as defined in (2.1). Lévy-Gromov inequality \[Gr\] states that

(4.5)
$$h_M(\beta )h_{𝕄_\delta ^{n+1}}(\beta ),\beta [0,1],$$

where $`𝕄_\delta ^{n+1}`$ is an $`(n+1)`$-dimensional sphere of radius $`1/\sqrt{\delta }`$. Moreover, if equality holds in (4.5) for some $`\beta (0,1)`$, then $`M`$ is isometric to $`𝕄_\delta ^{n+1}`$.

Inequality (4.5) can be obtained by integrating a differential inequality similar to (3.1), see \[Ba1\]. With a similar technique, we generalize (4.5) to the setting of convex bodies.

###### Theorem 4.8.

Let $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ be a smooth convex body of a Riemannian manifold $`(M^{n+1},g)`$. Suppose that the Ricci curvature of $`M`$ over $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ satisfies $`\mathrm{Ric}n\delta >0`$. Then,

(4.6)
$$h_\mathrm{\Omega }(\beta )h_{_\delta ^{n+1}}(\beta ),\beta [0,1],$$

where $`_\delta ^{n+1}`$ is an $`(n+1)`$-dimensional half-sphere of radius $`1/\sqrt{\delta }`$.

Moreover, if $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ has non-empty boundary then equality holds in (4.6) for some $`\beta _0(0,1)`$ if and only if $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ is isometric to $`_\delta ^{n+1}`$.

###### Proof.

The inequality follows from the fact, given in Theorem 2.5 (i), that any function satisfying the differential inequality (3.9) is bounded from below by an exact solution of the corresponding differential equation with the same boundary values. Furthermore, if we have equality for some $`\beta _0(0,1)`$ then $`h_\mathrm{\Omega }=h_{_\delta ^{n+1}}`$ on $`[0,1]`$, and by the asymptotic behaviour of $`h_\mathrm{\Omega }`$ at the origin (Proposition 2.1) we deduce that $`\mathrm{vol}(\mathrm{\Omega })=\mathrm{vol}(_\delta ^{n+1})`$. From statement (ii) in Theorem 2.7 we conclude that $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ is isometric to $`_\delta ^{n+1}`$. ∎

The preceding result can be given in the following alternative form

###### Corollary 4.9.

Let $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ be a smooth convex body of a Riemannian manifold $`(M^{n+1},g)`$. Suppose that the Ricci curvature of $`M`$ over $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ satisfies $`\mathrm{Ric}n\delta >0`$. Then, for any Borel set $`E\mathrm{\Omega }`$, we have

$$\frac{𝒫(E,\mathrm{\Omega })}{\mathrm{vol}(\mathrm{\Omega })}\frac{𝒫(E^{},_\delta ^{n+1})}{\mathrm{vol}(_\delta ^{n+1})},$$

where $`E^{}_\delta ^{n+1}`$ is a geodesic half-ball centered at $`_\delta ^{n+1}`$ such that

$$\frac{\mathrm{vol}(E)}{\mathrm{vol}(\mathrm{\Omega })}=\frac{\mathrm{vol}(E^{})}{\mathrm{vol}(_\delta ^{n+1})}.$$

Moreover, if $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ has non-empty boundary and equality holds for some set $`E\mathrm{\Omega }`$ with $`\mathrm{vol}(E)(0,\mathrm{vol}(\mathrm{\Omega }))`$, then $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ is isometric to an $`(n+1)`$-dimensional half-sphere of radius $`1/\sqrt{\delta }`$.

###### Remark 4.10.

Let $`h_C(\mathrm{\Omega })`$ be the Cheeger isoperimetric constant of a smooth convex body $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ of a Riemannian manifold $`(M^{n+1},g)`$, defined by

$$h_C(\mathrm{\Omega })=inf\{\frac{𝒫(E,\mathrm{\Omega })}{\mathrm{min}\{\mathrm{vol}(E),\mathrm{vol}(\mathrm{\Omega }E)\}}:\mathrm{vol}(E)(0,\mathrm{vol}(\mathrm{\Omega }))\}.$$

Note that

$$h_C(\mathrm{\Omega })=inf\{\frac{h_\mathrm{\Omega }(\beta )}{\mathrm{min}\{\beta ,1\beta \}}:\beta (0,1)\},$$

and so, if the Ricci curvature of $`M`$ is non-negative on $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$, we deduce by the concavity of the profile (Theorem 3.5)

$$h_C(\mathrm{\Omega })=2h_\mathrm{\Omega }(1/2),$$

which yields $`h_C(\mathrm{\Omega })h_C(_\delta ^{n+1})`$ when $`\mathrm{Ric}n\delta >0`$ in $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ by (4.6).

Now, by reproducing the arguments in \[Ba2\] (see also \[Ba1\]), we can refine Theorem 4.8, so as to get, under the same assumption on the Ricci curvature,

(4.7) $`h_\mathrm{\Omega }(\beta )\left[{\displaystyle \frac{h_C(\mathrm{\Omega })}{h_C(_\delta ^{n+1})}}\right]^{\frac{1}{n+1}}h_{_\delta ^{n+1}}(\beta ),\beta [0,1].`$
Moreover, if there is $`\beta _0(0,1)`$ such that (4.7) is an equality, then $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ is isometric to $`_\delta ^{n+1}`$.

### 4.3. Some consequences of Theorem 4.8

We first show how to use Theorem 4.8 to give a characterization of equality cases in Theorem 2.7 (i). We need a previous result (see \[Ga\] for closed Riemannian manifolds), linking the diameter of a domain $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ and the profile $`h_\mathrm{\Omega }`$.

###### Lemma 4.11.

The diameter of a smooth domain $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ of a complete Riemannian manifold $`(M^{n+1},g)`$ satisfies

$$\text{diam}(\mathrm{\Omega })_0^1\frac{d\beta }{h_\mathrm{\Omega }(\beta )},$$

with equality when $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ coincides with an $`(n+1)`$-dimensional half-sphere.

###### Proof.

Suppose that $`\mathrm{vol}(\mathrm{\Omega })<\mathrm{}`$ (in other case $`h_\mathrm{\Omega }0`$). If $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ is unbounded then choose any point $`p_0\mathrm{\Omega }`$. If $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ is bounded, fix a point $`p_0\overline{\mathrm{\Omega }}`$ such that $`\text{dist}(p_0,p_1)=\text{diam}(\mathrm{\Omega })`$ for some $`p_1\overline{\mathrm{\Omega }}`$. Denote by $`S_t`$ and $`B_t`$ the metric sphere and the metric open ball in $`M`$ centered at $`p_0`$ with radius $`t>0`$. By the coarea formula \[Ch3, Corollary I.3.1\], the volume of a set $`EM`$ can be computed as

$$\mathrm{vol}(E)=_0^+\mathrm{}_n(ES_t)𝑑t,$$

and so the function $`\beta (r)=\mathrm{vol}(\mathrm{\Omega }B_r)/\mathrm{vol}(\mathrm{\Omega })`$ is absolutely continuous on $`[0,\text{diam}(\mathrm{\Omega })]`$ and satisfies

(4.8)
$$\beta ^{}(r)=\frac{_n(\mathrm{\Omega }S_r)}{\mathrm{vol}(\mathrm{\Omega })}\frac{𝒫(\mathrm{\Omega }B_r,\mathrm{\Omega })}{\mathrm{vol}(\mathrm{\Omega })}h_\mathrm{\Omega }(\beta (r)),$$

for almost all $`r[0,\text{diam}(\mathrm{\Omega })]`$, with equality when $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ coincides with a half-sphere. The proof finishes by integrating in (4.8). ∎

###### Remark 4.12.

The asymptotic behaviour of $`h_\mathrm{\Omega }`$ at the origin (Proposition 2.1) ensures that the upper bound on the diameter given in the lemma above is finite when $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ is bounded.

As a consequence of Lemma 4.11 and Theorem 4.8 we can prove for convex bodies the analogous of the well-known Topogonov–Cheng theorem \[Ch2, Theorem 3.11\] for closed Riemannian manifolds. Note that the following result is not a direct consequence of the aforementioned one for closed manifolds since we are assuming that $`\mathrm{Ric}n\delta >0`$ only in $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$.

###### Theorem 4.13.

Let $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ be a smooth convex body with non-empty boundary of a Riemannian manifold $`(M^{n+1},g)`$. If the Ricci curvature of $`M`$ satisfies $`\mathrm{Ric}n\delta >0`$ on $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$, then

$$\text{diam}(\mathrm{\Omega })\frac{\pi }{\sqrt{\delta }},$$

and equality holds if and only if $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ is isometric to a half-sphere of radius $`1/\sqrt{\delta }`$.

###### Remark 4.14.

By following the arguments in \[Ba2, Theorems 3.2 and 3.3\] we could say that, for a smooth convex body $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ with non-empty boundary and $`\mathrm{Ric}n\delta >0`$, having a diameter close to $`\pi /\sqrt{\delta }`$ (resp. a volume close to $`\mathrm{vol}(_\delta ^{n+1})`$) is equivalent to the fact that $`h_\mathrm{\Omega }h_{_\delta ^{n+1}}`$ is uniformly close to $`0`$ on $`[0,1]`$ (resp. $`h_\mathrm{\Omega }/h_{_\delta ^{n+1}}`$ is uniformly close to $`1`$ on $`(0,1)`$). This means that almost maximality of the diameter or almost maximality of the volume both entail, in certain sense, almost minimality of the profile.

We finish this section with an eigenvalues comparison theorem. The application of an isoperimetric inequality to obtain eigenvalues estimates (see \[Ch, Theorem 2, p. 87\]) was first given by G. B. Faber and E. Krahn for smooth Euclidean domains with compact closure. In \[BM\] and \[BBG\] it is shown how the ideas of G. B. Faber and E. Krahn, together with Lévy–Gromov inequality (4.5), lead to sharp estimates for the first eigenvalue of the Laplace operator with Dirichlet boundary condition on a smooth, bounded domain of a complete Riemannian manifold $`(M^{n+1},g)`$ with $`\mathrm{Ric}n\delta >0`$. Other estimates for Dirichlet eigenvalues obtained in a similar way can be found in \[Ga\] and \[Ba2\].

In the setting of a smooth convex domain $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ with $`\mathrm{\Omega }\mathrm{}`$, the fact that isoperimetric hypersurfaces in the model $`_\delta ^{n+1}`$ intersect the boundary orthogonally, seems to indicate that the Neumann boundary condition on $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ is more appropriated if we want to derive an eigenvalues comparison from inequality (4.6). In fact, we can prove

###### Theorem 4.15.

Let $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ be a smooth convex body with non-empty boundary of a complete Riemannian manifold $`(M^{n+1},g)`$. If the Ricci curvature of $`M`$ satisfies $`\mathrm{Ric}n\delta >0`$ on $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$, then

(4.9) $`\lambda _1^N(\mathrm{\Omega })\lambda _1^N(_\delta ^{n+1})=(n+1)\delta ,`$
where the notation $`\lambda _1^N(\mathrm{\Omega })`$ stands for the lowest non-zero eigenvalue of the Laplace operator on $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ with Neumann boundary condition on $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$. Moreover, if (4.9) is an equality, then $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ is isometric to a half-sphere $`_\delta ^{n+1}`$ of radius $`1/\sqrt{\delta }`$.

###### Proof.

We give a brief desciption of the proof, which follows the symmetrization argument in \[BM, Théorème 5\]. For any non-trivial function $`uC^{\mathrm{}}(\mathrm{\Omega })`$, denote by $`R_\mathrm{\Omega }(u)`$ the Rayleigh quotient of $`u`$, given by

$$R_\mathrm{\Omega }(u)=\left(_\mathrm{\Omega }|u|^2𝑑_{n+1}\right)\left(_\mathrm{\Omega }u^2𝑑_{n+1}\right)^1.$$

Due to the variational characterization of Neumann eigenvalues there exists a smooth, mean zero function $`u`$ on $`\overline{\mathrm{\Omega }}`$ such that $`R_\mathrm{\Omega }(u)=\lambda _1^N(\mathrm{\Omega })`$ and $`u/\nu =0`$ on $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$, where $`\nu `$ is the inward normal vector to $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$. Suppose that $`u`$ has finitely many non-degenerate critical points (condition (ND)). The symmetrization technique allows us to construct, by using a suitable family of concentric half-balls in $`_\delta ^{n+1}`$ centered at a fix boundary point, a function $`u^{}`$ defined on $`_\delta ^{n+1}`$ such that

* $`u^{}`$ is a non-trivial Sobolev function on $`_\delta ^{n+1}`$.
* $`u^{}`$ has mean zero over $`_\delta ^{n+1}`$.
* $`R_\mathrm{\Omega }(u)R_{_\delta ^{n+1}}(u^{})`$ with equality if and only if $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ is isometric to $`_\delta ^{n+1}`$ (here is the point where Theorem (4.8) is used).

By using statement (iii) and the variational characterization of Neumann eigenvalues, the proof of the theorem follows.

If $`u`$ does not satisfy condition (ND), then we get (4.9) by approximation since $`\lambda _1^N(\mathrm{\Omega })`$ is the limit of a sequence $`\{R_\mathrm{\Omega }(u_n)\}_n`$, where each $`u_n`$ has mean zero and satisfies condition (ND). In this situation, the discussion of the equality case is not so obvious; we appeal to \[BM, p. 520\]. ∎

###### Remark 4.16.

By using inequality (4.7) instead of (4.6) in the proof of Theorem 4.15, we obtain

$$\lambda _1^N(\mathrm{\Omega })\left[\frac{h_C(\mathrm{\Omega })}{h_C(_\delta ^{n+1})}\right]^{\frac{2}{n+1}}\lambda _1^N(_\delta ^{n+1}),$$

with equality if and only if $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ is isometric to $`_\delta ^{n+1}`$.

## 5. Appendix: an alternative proof of inequality (4.1) in the euclidean case

Here we give a geometric proof of the fact that the isoperimetric profile of a convex body $`\mathrm{\Omega }^{n+1}`$ is bounded from above by the profile of the half-space $`^{n+1}=\{x_{n+1}>0\}`$. The proof relies on the fact that the local convexity of a domain $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ around a boundary point implies $`I_\mathrm{\Omega }I_{^{n+1}}`$ for small volumes.

###### Proposition 5.1.

Let $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ be a smooth domain in $`^{n+1}`$. If $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ has a local supporting hyperplane at a point $`x\mathrm{\Omega }`$, then there exists $`V_0>0`$ such that $`I_\mathrm{\Omega }(V)I_{^{n+1}}(V)`$, whenever $`V[0,V_0]`$.

###### Proof.

We follow the proof in \[RR, Proposition 3.6\]. Denote by $`𝒫(r)`$ and $`V(r)`$ respectively the perimeter in $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ and the volume of the ball $`B_r`$ of radius $`r>0`$ centered at $`x`$ intersected with $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$. Let $`\stackrel{~}{V}(r)`$ be the volume of the cone subtended by $`B_r\mathrm{\Omega }`$ and vertex at $`x`$. We have the relation

$$𝒫(r)=(n+1)\frac{\stackrel{~}{V}(r)}{r}.$$

On the one hand, since $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ is locally convex around $`x`$, we have $`V(r)\stackrel{~}{V}(r)`$ for $`r`$ small, so that

$$𝒫(r)=(n+1)\frac{\stackrel{~}{V}(r)}{r}(n+1)\frac{V(r)}{r}.$$

On the other hand, if $`𝒫_e(r)`$ and $`V_e(r)`$ respectively are the area and the volume of a half-ball in $`^{n+1}`$ of radius $`r>0`$, we have

$$\frac{𝒫_e(r)}{V_e(r)}=\frac{n+1}{r},$$

and so

$$\frac{𝒫(r)}{V(r)}\frac{𝒫_e(r)}{V_e(r)}.$$

Since $`V(r)V_e(r)`$ due to the local convexity of $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ around $`x`$, we finally get

$$\frac{𝒫(r)}{V(r)^{n/(n+1)}}=\frac{𝒫(r)}{V(r)}V(r)^{1/(n+1)}\frac{𝒫_e(r)}{V_e(r)}V_e(r)^{1/(n+1)}=\frac{𝒫_e(r)}{V_e(r)^{n/(n+1)}}=d_n,$$

where $`d_n`$ is the constant that appears in the expression of the isoperimetric profile of the half-space $`I_{^{n+1}}(V)=d_nV^{n/(n+1)}`$.

Hence, for small $`r`$, we obtain the relation $`𝒫(r)I_{^{n+1}}(V(r))`$, which proves the claim. ∎

*Proof of inequality (4.1):* Let $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ be a smooth convex body in $`^{n+1}`$. As the renormalized profile $`Y_{^{n+1}}`$ is linear as function of $`V`$, and $`Y_\mathrm{\Omega }`$ is concave (Theorem 3.5), the proof trivially follows from Proposition 5.1.

###### Remark 5.2.

Though we have succeed in comparing the profiles for small volumes with geometric arguments, the global comparison has required global analytic properties of the profile.


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# Rapid Growth of Dust Particles in the Vicinity of Local Gas Density Enhancements in a Solar Nebula

## 1 Introduction

The focus of this paper is on the study of the growth rate of dust grains in the vicinity of a local maximum density of a nebula. It has recently been shown that in a nebula with local gas density enhancements, the combined effect of gas drag and pressure gradients causes solid objects to rapidly migrate toward the location of maximum density (Haghighipour $`\&`$ Boss, 2003a$`\&`$b, hereafter HB03a$`\&`$b). In those papers, the authors have studied the dynamics of a single object in a non-uniform gaseous disk with no particulate background material. The only interaction considered in those papers between the object and the disk was through the gas drag. If the disk contains a mixture of gas and small solid particles, however, the motion of an object will also be affected by its interaction with this particulate material. For instance, an object may sweep up smaller particles and grow larger during its gas-drag induced migration. In this paper, I consider particulate material coupled to a gaseous disk with a local density enhancement, and study the rate of growth of small particles while sweeping up the particles of the background material.

For the past four decades, the growth of dust particles in a solar nebula was studied by many authors. In 1969, Safronov studied the growth of dust particles during their vertical descent in a quiescent nebula and showed that, considering their sticking growth, settling of dust particles could be quite rapid. Safronov’s formulation indicated that dust particles could grow to 1 centimeter in size at a 1 AU radial distance from the Sun, assuming a 100$`\%`$ sticking probability (Safronov, 1969). Growth and sedimentation of dust particles have also been studied extensively by Weidenschilling (1980, 1984) and Nakagawa et al. (1981, 1986). Weidenschilling (1980, 1984) considered coagulation of dust grains due to van der Waals force in their settling toward the midplane and showed that, while such particles grow to 1 centimeter in size, they create a turbulent layer in the vicinity of the midplane which increases the rates of their collision and their coalescence to larger objects. Nakagawa et al. (1981) studied the growth and settling of dust grains at the location of Earth in a nebula and showed that, similar to the results presented by Safronov, the settling of particles and the formation of a layer of centimeter-sized objects in the vicinity of the midplane can occur in a relatively short time ($``$300 years). This study was later extended by Nakagawa et al. (1986) to the regions of Jupiter and Neptune in which the authors studied the settling and growth of dust particles in laminar phase of a nebula and presented analytical expressions for the rates of the growth and also vertical and radial motions of solids. By treating a dust layer as a two-dimensional fluid, Nakagawa et al. (1986) showed that the total settling time of dust grains in the two stages of gas- and dust-dominant phases are smaller than those estimated by Weidenschilling (1980) and Nakagawa et al. (1981). More recently, Supulver $`\&`$ Lin (2000) have studied the coagulation of small solids in a turbulent protostellar disk with an application to the formation of icy planetesimals in the outer region of the nebula.

In this paper, I extend the previous studies presented in HB03a$`\&`$b by considering the growth of a dust particle due to interaction with the particulate background of a nebula in the vicinity of its local density enhancement. The main purpose of this paper is to study how the combined effect of gas drag and pressure gradients can speed up the coagulation of dust particles and the formation of centimeter-sized objects.

The model nebula considered in this paper is presented in $`\mathrm{\S }`$ 2. Section 3 presents the equations of motion of a solid particle and $`\mathrm{\S }`$ 4 deals with the analysis of the numerical results. Section 5 concludes this study by reviewing the results and discussing their applications.

## 2 The Model Nebula

The model nebula in this study is an isothermal and turbulence-free protostellar disk with a solar-type star at its center. The nebula is assumed to be a mixture of pure molecular hydrogen at hydrostatic equilibrium, and small submicron-sized solid particles. It is also assumed that the density of the gas maximizes at certain locations in the nebula.

In a cylindrical coordinate system with its origin at the location of the central star and its polar plane on the midplane of the nebula, the gas distribution function at any point $`(r,z)`$ is given by (HB03b)

$$\rho _g(r,z)=\rho _g(r,0)\mathrm{exp}\left\{\frac{8GM}{\pi \overline{v}_{\mathrm{th}}^2}\left[\frac{1}{(r^2+z^2)^{1/2}}\frac{1}{r}\right]\right\}.$$
(1)
In equation (1), $`M`$ is the mass of the central star, $`G`$ is the gravitational constant, and $`\rho _g(r,0)`$ represents the gas distribution function on the midplane of the nebula. For simplicity, the density of the gas is considered to have an azimuthally symmetric maximum on the midplane and is given by (HB03a$`\&`$b)

$$\rho _g(r,0)=\rho _0\mathrm{exp}\left[\beta \left(\frac{r}{r_m}1\right)^2\right],$$
(2)
where $`\rho _0,r_m`$ and $`\beta `$ are constant quantities (Figure 1).

The quantity $`\overline{v}_{\mathrm{th}}^2=8K_BT/\pi m_H`$ in equation (1) is the mean thermal velocity of the gas molecules. In this equation, $`K_B`$ is the Boltzmann constant, $`T`$ is the temperature of the gas, and $`m_H`$ is the molecular mass of hydrogen. The gas density function as given by equation (1) ensures that along the vertical axis, the gravitational attraction of the central star will be balanced by the vertical component of the pressure gradients (HB03b).

Because of their submicron sizes, the particles of the background material of the nebula are strongly coupled to the gas. The motions of these particles are only affected by the gas drag. On the other hand, since molecular hydrogen obeys the equation of state of an ideal gas, and because the nebula is isothermal, any local enhancement in the gas density will also enhance the pressure of the gas. In the vicinity of such pressure enhanced regions, any solid object undergoes radial migration toward the location of the maximum pressure while approaching the midplane (Whipple, 1964, HB03a$`\&`$b). The rates of such migrations are small for small particles. For the particles of the background, although radial migration is extremely slow, along with vertical descent, it results in accumulation of particulate material at the locations of density enhancements and also in the vicinity of the midplane. In this study, it is assumed that at any position in the nebula, the gas and particle distribution functions are proportional. That is, $`\rho _{\mathrm{dust}}(r,z)=f\rho _g(r,z)`$, where $`\rho _{\mathrm{dust}}(r,z)`$ is the distribution function of the background material. The solid/gas ratio $`f`$ can attain different values at different positions and can also vary with time. However, for simplicity, in this study, it is assumed to be a constant number much smaller than unity.

## 3 Equation of Motion

An object in the model nebula considered here is subject to the gravitational attraction of the central star and the drag force of the gas. Because of its small size, such an object, similar to the particles of the background material, shows the tendency of staying with the gas and its dynamics is mostly driven by gas drag. The tendency of solid particles in being coupled to the gas is weaker for larger objects. For a particle with a size within the range considered here, its coupling to the gas is less strong than the coupling of the submicron-sized particles of the background material. As a result, the particle moves faster than the background material and collides with them. Such collisions may result in adhesion of the background particles to the moving object and increase its mass. Such a change in the mass of the object causes a change in its momentum and subsequently affects its dynamics.

The rate of the change of the momentum of an object due to the sweeping of the background material is proportional to the rate of the collision of the moving object with those particles. In general, whether a collision occurs between two objects depends on their relative velocity. For an object with mass $`m`$ and radius $`a`$ at position $`(r,z,\phi )`$ moving with velocity $`𝐕`$ with respect to the central star, the rate of change of its momentum due to the sweeping of the background particles is equal to

$$\frac{d𝐏}{dt}=\pi \rho _{\mathrm{dust}}(r,z)a^2\frac{d\mathrm{}}{dt}(𝐕𝐔),$$
(3)
where the sticking coefficient is equal to unity. In equation (3), $`𝐏`$ is the portion of the total momentum of the object that changes by its coalescence with smaller background particles and $`d\mathrm{}=[(dr)^2+(dz)^2+(rd\phi )^2]^{1/2}`$ is a line element along the path of the object. The quantity $`𝐔`$ in equation (3) represents the velocity of the particles of the medium along the line element $`d\mathrm{}`$. In writing equation (3), it has been assumed that, while sweeping smaller particles, the density of the object remains unchanged and it stays perfectly spherical. It is important to emphasize that in this equation $`m`$ and $`a`$ are functions of time, and are related as

$$\frac{dm}{dt}=\pi \rho _{\mathrm{dust}}(r,z)a^2\frac{d\mathrm{}}{dt}.$$
(4)
Equation (4) immediately implies

$$\frac{da}{dt}=\frac{1}{4}\left(\frac{\rho _{\mathrm{dust}}}{\rho }\right)\frac{d\mathrm{}}{dt},$$
(5)
where $`\rho `$ is the density of the object.

For small particles such as those studied here, the magnitude of the velocity $`𝐕`$ is mainly dominated by its components in the radial and vertical directions. As shown in HB03a$`\&`$b, these components have larger values for larger objects. That implies, while an object grows by sweeping the particles of the background, it will move faster in the radial and vertical directions. However, due to the strong coupling to the gas, for the particles of interest in this paper, the rates of increase in radial and vertical motions are quite small. As a result, the magnitude of the velocity of the object relative to the background material (i.e., $`|𝐕𝐔|`$), is also small. This implies that, when migrating toward the location of a maximum gas density, the object approaches the background particles very slowly. Such a slow approach suggests a gentle encounter between the moving object and the particle of the background followed by the sweeping up of the smaller particle by the larger object. Laboratory experiments have indicated that the collisional coagulation of millimeter-sized and smaller particles can well be approximated by such a sweeping process (Wurm $`\&`$ Blum, 1998).

As mentioned above, the small velocities of the background particles of the medium are the result of a strong coupling between the gas and these particles. For these particles such a coupling is so strong that with a good approximation, one can replace $`𝐔(r,z,\phi )`$ in equation (3) with the velocity of the gas at that position. As a result, equation (3) can be written as

$$\frac{d𝐏}{dt}=\pi \rho _{\mathrm{dust}}(r,z)a^2\frac{d\mathrm{}}{dt}𝐕_{\mathrm{rel}},$$
(6)
where $`𝐕_{\mathrm{rel}}`$ is the relative velocity of the object with respect to the gas. In the cylindrical coordinate system considered here, the radial, vertical and tangential components of this velocity are, respectively, given by $`\dot{r},\dot{z}`$, and $`r(\dot{\phi }\omega _g)`$, where the motions of gas molecules along the $`z`$-axis have been neglected. Because the gas is at hydrostatic equilibrium, its angular velocity, $`\omega _g`$, is slightly different from its Keplerian value and is given by

$$\omega _g^2=\frac{GM}{(r^2+z^2)^{3/2}}+\frac{1}{r\rho _g(r,z)}\frac{𝒫_g(r,z)}{r}.$$
(7)
In this equation, $`𝒫_g(r,z)`$ is the pressure of the gas.

Considering the mass-growth equation (4), the equation of motion of an object in our model nebula is given by

$$m\ddot{𝐑}=\frac{GMm}{(r^2+z^2)^{3/2}}𝐑\pi \rho _{\mathrm{dust}}(r,z)a^2\frac{d\mathrm{}}{dt}𝐕_{\mathrm{rel}}𝐅_{\mathrm{drag}},$$
(8)
where $`𝐑(r,z)`$ is the position vector of the particle and

$$𝐅_{\mathrm{drag}}=\frac{4}{3}\pi \frac{a^2}{a+\lambda }\overline{v}_{\mathrm{th}}\left[\lambda \rho _g(r,z)+\frac{3m_0}{2\sigma }\right]𝐕_{\mathrm{rel}},$$
(9)
represents the drag force of the gas. In equation (9), $`\sigma `$ is the collisional cross section between two hydrogen molecules and $`\lambda `$ is their mean free path.

Equation (9) has been written following Supulver $`\&`$ Lin (2000) and HB03a$`\&`$b whose authors present $`𝐅_{\mathrm{drag}}`$ in a form that combines Epstein and Stokes drags in one formula. Because the focus of this paper is on the growth of 1-1000 micron-sized objects to 1 centimeter in radius, as shown in HB03$`\&`$b, the gas Reynolds number (Re) for these objects in the model nebula presented here stays well below unity. This implies that the drag coefficient $`C_D`$ in $`𝐅_{\mathrm{drag}}`$ has to be taken to be equal to 24/Re (Supulver $`\&`$ Lin, 2000; Weidenschilling, 1977, HB03a$`\&`$b).

## 4 Numerical Results

As mentioned in $`\mathrm{\S }`$3, the distribution of the background material is considered to be proportional to the gas distribution function. Podolak $`\&`$ Cameron (1974) considered $`f=0.0034`$ for a solar nebula with fully formed silicates and metals (also see Weidenschilling, 1988). Supulver $`\&`$ Lin (2000), however, have considered $`f=0.0045`$ by assuming that the abundance of $`\mathrm{H}_2\mathrm{O}`$ in the nebula is the same as its solar value. They call this value of $`f`$ nominal and have also considered $`f=0.045`$ and 0.45 in order to study the effect of an increase in the concentration of material on the midplane, on collision and coagulation of small solids. The value of $`f`$ in this study is chosen to be 0.0034. From equation (4), it is evident that larger values of $`f`$ will result in faster growth of particles.

The equation of motion of a particle \[Eq.(8)\] and the growth equation (5) were integrated, numerically, for initial radii ranging from 1 to 1000 microns, and for different values of the gas temperature. In all these computations, the mass of the central star was chosen to be equal to the mass of the Sun, $`\beta =1,r_m=1`$ AU, and $`\rho _0=10^{10}`$g cm-3. The collisional cross section of hydrogen molecules, $`\sigma `$, was taken to be $`2\times 10^{15}\mathrm{cm}^2`$, and their mean free paths $`\lambda (\mathrm{cm})=4\times 10^9/\rho _g(r,z)(\mathrm{gcm}^3)`$. The initial value of the height of a particle above the midplane was set equal to 1/10 of its initial radial distance from the Sun. The initial velocity of the particle along the vertical axis was taken to be zero, and in the radial direction, the particle was given an initial Keplerian circular velocity.

The growth of an object was followed until it reached 1 cm in size. Although centimeter-sized objects can also grow larger by sweeping smaller particles, a 1 cm radius was chosen as the upper limit since the assumed growth process, that is, sweeping of smaller particles, is more effective for dust grains and micron-sized objects. In a nebula with centimeter-sized particles, in addition to sweeping of the submicron particles of the background, there is also collision among centimeter-sized particles which may result in their coagulation and/or fragmentation. Such collisions can also generate dust particles. The collisions of micron-sized particles, on the other hand, are gentle and result in coalescence of the involved objects. To avoid the complexities associated with treating centimeter-sized particles then, the numerical simulations were stopped at $`a=1`$ cm. Figure 2 shows the growth of a 10 micron-sized grain with a density of 2 g cm-3, initially at $`(r=3,z=0.3)`$ AU. The gas temperature is 300 K. As shown here, in a very short time, the particle grows to 1 centimeter in size. During this time, it undergoes radial migration and also descends toward the midplane (Fig. 3). For a comparison, the particle’s migrations without mass-growth have also been plotted. As expected, the rates of the radial migration and vertical descent of the particle increase by increasing its size. Figures 3 and 4 clearly show that the combined effect of gas drag and pressure gradients causes particles to rapidly grow during their gas-drag induced migrations.

A comparison between the two graphs of Figure 3 indicates that during the time that the particle grows to 1 cm, it descends toward the midplane faster than it migrates radially. The actual path of the particle during this time has been shown in Figure 4. Such a rapid vertical descent was also reported by Nakagawa et al. (1986), where the authors have shown that, for settling dust particles, the ratio of the vertical and radial components of velocity is greater than one and it increases by increasing the size of the particle. The effect of the radial component of the particle’s velocity becomes more pronounced when the particle reaches 1 cm in radius and grows larger. Nakagawa et al. (1986) call this phase of the growth process the “gas-dominated” phase. During this phase, the particle undergoes an over-damped oscillatory motion in the vicinity of the midplane (HB03b).

To better understand the relation between the growth of the particle and its vertical and radial motions, it is useful to calculate the time and the distance of collision between the object and a submicron grain of the background material. To define these quantities, recall that it has been assumed that all collisions between the object and particles of the background result in 100$`\%`$ sticking. The time of collision is therefore defined as the time during which the mass of an object, $`m(t)`$, is increased to $`m(t)+m_0`$, where $`m_0`$ is the mass of a background grain. Because it has been assumed that after a collision, the object maintains its spherical shape and will have the same density, assuming a spherical shape for a background particle, and also assuming that it has similar density as the moving object, after a collision the radius of the object changes from $`a(t)`$ to $`[a^3(t)+a_0^3]^{1/3}`$, where $`a_0`$ is the radius of a background grain. The rate of change of radius, on the other hand, is given by equation (5). From this equation and also considering that $`a_0<<a(t)`$, the time of collision can be approximately written as

$$\tau _c(t)\frac{4a_0^3}{3a^2(t)}\left(\frac{\rho }{\rho _{\mathrm{dust}}}\right)\left(\frac{d\mathrm{}}{dt}\right)^1.$$
(10)
Equation (10) can also be obtained by introducing an equivalent of a mean free path for the object. The mean free path of the object, shown by $`\lambda _d`$, is defined as the distance that the object travels before it sweeps a background grain. Similar to the equation of the mean free path of a gas molecule, $`\lambda _d`$ can be written as

$$\lambda _d(t)=\frac{m_0}{\pi [a(t)+a_0]^2\rho _{\mathrm{dust}}}.$$
(11)
Equation (11) immediately results in equation (10), noting that $`\lambda _d=(d\mathrm{}/dt)\tau _c`$.

Figure 5 shows the time of collision and the mean free path of the 10 micron object of Figure 2 during its growth to 1 cm. As shown here, the magnitudes of $`\tau _c`$ and $`\lambda _d`$ rapidly decrease in time. To show that in more detail, the time of growth has been divided into 4 segments. As the object sweeps the background material and grows in size, the rate of its gas-drag induced migration becomes faster. As a result, it approaches a background particle in a shorter time. Also, as shown in Equation (11), the mean free path of the object is inversely proportional to the square of its instantaneous radius. Since $`a(t)`$ increases at all times, $`\lambda _d`$ is a monotonically decreasing function of time.

Numerical simulations were also carried out for different values of the gas temperature. Figure 6 shows the time of the growth of a 10 micron particle to 1 cm for three different values of the temperature. As shown here, the time of growth increases at higher temperatures. That can be attributed to the fact that the spatial distribution of the background material is directly proportional to the gas density function \[Eq. (1)\]. By increasing the gas temperature, the FWHM of $`\rho _g`$ and $`\rho _{\mathrm{dust}}`$ increases (Fig. 7) indicating an increase in the spatial distances between the background particles. This causes the time of collision to increase and the object will take a longer time to grow larger at higher temperatures.

## 5 Conclusions

The results of the numerical study of the growth rates of small particles in the vicinity of a local density enhancement of a solar nebula were presented. It was shown that, as a consequence of migration toward the location of a local density enhancement, solid objects can rapidly grow in size by sweeping up the smaller particles of the background material. Particles of interest in this study had sizes between 1 to 1000 micron and their growth-rates were studied until they reached 1 cm in radius. The results presented here indicate that, compared to the time of settling and growth of dust particles in a nebula without local gas density enhancements (Safronov, 1969; Weidenschilling, 1980; Nakagawa et al., 1981; Weidenschilling, 1988), in the vicinity of a local maximum gas density, the combined effect of gas drag and pressure gradients can increase the growth rates of dust grains by one order of magnitude.

In this study the focus was on the growth of small grains to objects of 1 cm in size. Although centimeter-sized objects can still acquire mass and grow larger by sweeping up smaller particles, their dynamics is not solely driven by gas drag and the sweeping process. The velocities of such particles are large enough to cause them to fragment and produce dust when they collide. On the other hand, as noted by Safronov (1969), Weidenschilling (1980), Nakagawa et al. (1981), Nakagawa et al. (1986), and Weidenschilling (1988), the largest that dust particles can grow to while settling toward the midplane is centimeter-sized. The concentration of centimeter-sized particles in the vicinity of the midplane creates a turbulent layer (Weidenschilling, 1980) which requires a more detailed analysis. All these introduce complexities in treating centimeter-sized objects that are unnecessary for the purpose of this study. Studies are, however, underway in which the mutual interactions of centimeter-sized particles and the effect of turbulence on their collision and coalescence have been considered.

The spatial density of the particulate background of the nebula was chosen to be proportional to the gas distribution function. The solid/gas ratio $`f`$ was chosen to be constant and equal to 0.0034. This is a minimal value for $`f`$ that corresponds to a dust composition of metals and silicates on the midplane of a standard nebula at 1 AU (Podolak $`\&`$ Cameron, 1974; Weidenschilling, 1980, 1988). In a more realistic scenario, the value of $`f`$ is a function of position and time. For instance, in the model nebula considered here, as time passes, the background material of the nebula settles toward the midplane and also migrates toward $`r=1`$ AU, where the gas distribution function maximizes. This increases the dust/gas ratio around $`r=1`$ AU on the midplane and decreases $`f`$ at other locations. In such cases, one has to take the time variation of $`f`$ into consideration. However, because in this study, the rates of radial and vertical migration of the background material are smaller than those of the objects of interest, and also because it has been assumed that the sticking probability is 100$`\%`$, which results in faster growth of the particle, growing to 1 cm in size occurs so rapidly that the particles of the background will not have enough time to undergo appreciable radial and vertical migrations.

As mentioned earlier, the focus of this study has been on the growth of particles to 1 cm in size. For such small objects, the assumption of growth merely due to sweeping up smaller particles is quite plausible since these objects are coupled to the gas and they approach one another slowly. Once the sizes of objects increase 1 cm, their collisions may result in adhesion and/or fragmentation. As a result, their growth will not be entirely due to sweeping up of smaller particles and will be affected by their individual velocities. Replacing the relative velocities of such objects with their velocities relative to the gas is no longer a valid approximation. In such cases, one has to follow individual particles and consider their velocities relative to one another. Such an extension of this work is currently in preparation for publication.

I am thankful to Alan Boss for critically reading the original manuscript. This work is partially supported by the NASA Origins of the Solar System Program under Grant NAG5-11569 and by the NASA Astrobiology Institute under Cooperative Agreement NCC2-1056.