Mean width of regular polytopes and expected maxima of correlated Gaussian variables

Abstract: An old conjecture states that among all simplices inscribed in the unit sphere the regular one has the maximal mean width. An equivalent formulation is that for any centered Gaussian vector $(\xi_1,\dots,\xi_n)$ satisfying $\mathbb E\xi_1^2= \dots =\mathbb E\xi_n^2=1$ one has $$ \mathbb E\,\max{\xi_1,\dots,\xi_n}\leq\sqrt{\frac{n}{n-1}}\, \mathbb E\,\max{\eta_1,\dots,\eta_n}, $$ where $\eta_1,\eta_2,\dots,$ are independent standard Gaussian variables. Using this probabilistic interpretation we derive an asymptotic version of the conjecture. We also show that the mean width of the regular simplex with $2n$ vertices is remarkably close to the mean width of the regular crosspolytope with the same number of vertices. Interpreted probabilistically, our result states that $$ 1\leq\frac{\mathbb E\,\max{|\eta_1|,\dots,|\eta_n|}}{\mathbb E\,\max{\eta_1,\dots,\eta_{2n}}} \leq\min\left{\sqrt{\frac{2n}{2n-1}}, \, 1+\frac{C}{n\, \log n} \right}, $$ where $C>0$ is an absolute constant. We also compute the higher moments of the projection length $W$ of the regular cube, simplex and crosspolytope onto a line with random direction, thus proving several formulas conjectured by S. Finch. Finally, we prove distributional limit theorems for the length of random projection as the dimension goes to $\infty$. In the case of the $n$-dimensional unit cube $Q_n$, we prove that $$ W_{Q_n} - \sqrt{\frac{2n}{\pi}} \overset{d}{\underset{n\to\infty}\longrightarrow} {\mathcal{N}} \left(0, \frac{\pi-3}{\pi}\right), $$ whereas for the simplex and the crosspolytope the limiting distributions are related to the Gumbel double exponential law.