Volume decay and concentration of high-dimensional Euclidean balls – a PDE and variational perspective

Abstract

Abstract It is a well-known fact – which can be shown by elementary calculus – that the volume of the unit ball in ℝ n {\mathbb{R}^{n}} decays to zero and simultaneously gets concentrated on the thin shell near the boundary sphere as n ↗ ∞ {n\nearrow\infty} . Many rigorous proofs and heuristic arguments are provided for this fact from different viewpoints, including Euclidean geometry, convex geometry, Banach space theory, combinatorics, probability, discrete geometry, etc. In this note, we give yet another two proofs via the regularity theory of elliptic partial differential equations and calculus of variations.