On the stability for Alexandrov's Soap Bubble theorem

Rolando Magnanini, Giorgio Poggesi

Published 2016-10-22Version 1

Alexandrov's Soap Bubble theorem dates back to $1958$ and states that a compact embedded hypersurface in $\mathbb{R}^N$ with constant mean curvature must be a sphere. For its proof, A.D. Alexandrov invented his reflection priciple. In $1982$, R. Reilly gave an alternative proof, based on integral identities and inequalities, connected with the torsional rigidity of a bar. In this article we study the stability of the spherical symmetry: the question is how much a hypersurface is near to a sphere, when its mean curvature is near to a constant in some norm. We present a stability estimate that states that a compact hypersurface $\Gamma\subset\mathbb{R}^N$ can be contained in a spherical annulus whose interior and exterior radii, say $\rho_i$ and $\rho_e$, satisfy the inequality $$ \rho_e - \rho_i \le C \Vert H - H_0 \Vert^{\tau_N}_{L^1 (\Gamma)}, $$ where $\tau_N=1/2$ if $N=2, 3$, and $\tau_N=1/(N+2)$ if $N\ge 4$. Here, $H$ is the mean curvature of $\Gamma$, $H_0$ is some reference constant and $C$ is a constant that depends on some geometrical and spectral parameters associated with $\Gamma$. This estimate improves previous results in the literature under various aspects. We also present similar estimates for some related overdetermined problems.