Topological properties of sets represented by an inequality involving distances

Abstract: Consider a set represented by an inequality. An interesting phenomenon which occurs in various settings in mathematics is that the interior of this set is the subset where strict inequality holds, the boundary is the subset where equality holds, and the closure of the set is the closure of its interior. This paper discusses this phenomenon assuming the set is a Voronoi cell induced by given sites (subsets), a geometric object which appears in many fields of science and technology and has diverse applications. Simple counterexamples show that the discussed phenomenon does not hold in general, but it is established in a wide class of cases. More precisely, the setting is a (possibly infinite dimensional) uniformly convex normed space with arbitrary positively separated sites. An important ingredient in the proof is a strong version of the triangle inequality due to Clarkson (1936), an interesting inequality which has been almost totally forgotten.