Sharp stability for the (B)-theorem

Abstract

The (B)-theorem of Cordero-Erausquin, Fradelizi and Maurey states that if $\gamma$ is the standard Gaussian in $\mathbb R^n$, $K \subset \mathbb R^n$ is an origin-symmetric convex set, and $s, t \in \mathbb R$ then $\gamma\left(e^{\frac{s + t}{2}} K\right) \ge \sqrt{\gamma(e^{s} K) \gamma(e^{t} K)}$. Herscovici, Livshyts, Rotem and Volberg proved a stability version of this result, showing that if one has equality up to a factor $(1 + \epsilon)$ in the (B)-inequality for $K$ then the inradius of $K$ must be either ``very large''or ``very small,''where the bounds depend on $\epsilon$ and on $n$. We give a new stability estimate which is dimension-free and also yields more precise information about bodies which are near-optimizers of the (B)-inequality. In particular, our results imply that if $\gamma\left(e^{\frac{s + t}{2}} K\right) \le (1 + \epsilon) \sqrt{\gamma(e^{s} K) \gamma(e^{t} K)}$, then every principal component of the covariance matrix of the probability measure obtained by restricting the Gaussian to $K$ must either be at least $1 - O(\epsilon)$ or at most $O(\epsilon)$, which is sharp. Our method extends immediately to yield stability estimates for generalizations of the (B)-inequality, namely the ``strong''and ``functional''(B)-inequalities, which reduce to spectral questions about $1$-log-concave measures on $\mathbb R^n$.