ESSENTIALCONNECTEDNESSANDTHERIGIDITY.PDF

F. CAGNETTI, M. COLOMBO, G. DE PHILIPPIS, AND F. MAGGI We provide a geometric characterization of rigidity of equality cases in Ehrhard’s symmetrization inequality for Gaussian perimeter. This condition is formu- lated in terms of a new measure-theoretic notion of connectedness for Borel sets, inspired by Federer’s definition of indecomposable current. 1. 1.1. Symmetrization inequalities are among the most basic tools used in the Calculus of Variations. The study of their equality cases plays a fundamental role in the explicit characterization of minimizers, thus in the computation of optimal constants in geometric and functional inequalities. Although it is usually easy to derive useful necessary conditions for equality cases, the analysis of rigidity of equality cases (that is, the situ- ation when every set realizing equality in the given symmetrization inequality turns out to be symmetric) is a much subtler issue. Two deep results that provide sufficient condi- tions for the rigidity of equality cases are Brothers-Ziemer theorem concerning Schwartz’s symmetrization inequality for the Dirichlet-type integral functionals [BZ88], and Chleb´ık- Cianchi-Fusco theorem, concerning Steiner’s symmetrization inequality for distributional perimeter [CCF05] (see [BCF13] for an extension of this last result to higher dimensional Steiner’s symmetrization). In this paper we introduce a new point of view on rigidity of equality cases, that will allow us to provide characterizations of rigidity (rather than merely sufficient conditions) in various situations. We address the case of Ehrhard’s symmetrization inequality for Gaussian perimeter. Ehrhard’s symmetrization is a powerful device in the analysis of geometric variational problems in the Gauss space, the vers