Retrieving convex bodies from restricted covariogram functions

Abstract

The covariogram gK(x) of a convex body K ⊆ Ed is the function which associates to each x ∈ Ed the volume of the intersection of K with K + x, where Ed denotes the Euclidean d-dimensional space. Matheron (1986) asked whether gK determines K, up to translations and reflections in a point. Positive answers to Matheron's question have been obtained for large classes of planar convex bodies, while for d ≥ 3 there are both positive and negative results. One of the purposes of this paper is to sharpen some of the known results on Matheron's conjecture indicating how much of the covariogram information is needed to get the uniqueness of determination. We indicate some subsets of the support of the covariogram, with arbitrarily small Lebesgue measure, such that the covariogram, restricted to those subsets, identifies certain geometric properties of the body. These results are more precise in the planar case, but some of them, both positive and negative ones, are proved for bodies of any dimension. Moreover some results regard most convex bodies, in the Baire category sense. Another purpose is to extend the class of convex bodies for which Matheron's conjecture is confirmed by including all planar convex bodies possessing two nondegenerate boundary arcs being reflections of each other.