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Let $n \in \mathbb N^*$, $p \in [1,\infty]$, $\alpha > 0$, $\beta \ge 1$, and $r \ge 0$. For $x \in \mathbb R^n$, let $B_{n,p}(x;r) := \{x' \in \mathbb R^n \mid \|x'-x\|_p \le r\}$ be the $\ell_p$-ball around $x$ of radius $r \ge 0$ in $\mathbb R^n$.

Question. What is the value of $u(n,p,r,\alpha,\beta) := \int_{B_{n,p}(x;r)}e^{-\frac{1}{\alpha}\|x'-x\|_p^{\beta}}dx'$ ?

dohmatob
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    Several comments not weighty enough to merit an answer: first you should have $dx'$ rather than $dx$. On the other hand you can use translation invariance of the integral to find that $$u(n,p,r,\alpha) = \int_{B(0;r)} e^{-\frac 1 \alpha |x'|_p} dx'$$ and replace $x'$ by $x$. – Umberto P. Jan 02 '20 at 18:44
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    Second you can employ the change of variable $x = \alpha y$, $dx = \alpha^n dy$ to find $$\int_{B(0;r)} e^{-\frac 1\alpha |x|p} , dx = \alpha^n \int{B(0;r/\alpha)} e^{-|y|_p} , dy.$$ – Umberto P. Jan 02 '20 at 18:47
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    Third, this is now essentially the same as evaluating the integral $$\int_{B(0;r)} e^{-|y|_p} , dy.$$ Do you know how to do this when $p=2$? – Umberto P. Jan 02 '20 at 18:48
  • It may be easier to bring the radius parameter from the domain into the integrand, (The opposite to what Umberto does), and then, while having a fixed domain, justify differentiating under the integral. – Ciarán Ó Raghaillaigh Jan 02 '20 at 19:19
  • @UmbertoP. Thanks for the comments. Indeed, since $y \mapsto e^{-|y|p}$ is radially symmetric about the origin, $\int{B_{n,p}(0,r)} e^{-|y|p}dy = n\omega{n,p}\int_{0}^r e^{-t}t^{n-1}dt$, where $\omega_{n,p}$ is the volume of the $\ell_p$ unit ball in $\mathbb R^n$. – dohmatob Jan 03 '20 at 07:54
  • Oops. I can prove the above formula for the case $p=2$, via polar coordinates. Actualy, this is a standard result. Anyone knows whether such a result holds in the case $p \ne 2$ ? – dohmatob Jan 03 '20 at 08:30
  • For $large n$, $\frac{1}{ n!\alpha^n\omega_n }u(n,p,r,\alpha) =CDF(\frac{r/\alpha-n}{\sqrt{n}})$, where $\omega_n$ is the volume of the $\ell_2$ unit ball in $\mathbb R^n$. In particularly, $\int_{x' \in \mathbb R^n}e^{-\frac{1}{\alpha}|x'-x|p}dx' = \lim{r \rightarrow \infty}u(n,p,r,\alpha) = n!\alpha^n\omega_n$, for all $x \in \mathbb R^n$. – dohmatob Jan 03 '20 at 11:49
  • After writing out my answer, I remembered that this can be viewed through the coarea formula as well (The first application in here (integration in spherical coordinates) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coarea_formula; take the f to be the exponential you have times the indicator that you are in the ball). I think it was educational for me to write it all up though; I still need practice with fundamentals and the proof of coarea formula is nontrivial. – E-A Jan 03 '20 at 16:40

2 Answers2

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I will write the justification for exchanging the differentiation and integration that @Ciaran mentioned in the comments; I think that is the best way to prove the formula you wrote in the comments, namely:

$$\int_{B_{n,p}(r)} e^{-\|x \|_p} dx = \omega_{n,p} \int_0^r ns^{n-1} e^{-s} ds$$

where $\omega_{n,p}(r)$ is the $\ell_p$-ball of radius $r$ in $\mathbb{R}^n$

We can argue that the integral above is a function of $r$, so we define

$$ f(r) = \int_{B_{n,p}(r)} e^{-\|x \|_p} dx $$.

Now, we try to compute the derivative, so we first compute an upper and a lower bound on the quotient $ f'(r,\epsilon) = \frac{f(r+\epsilon) - f(r)}{\epsilon}$ to make sure that the derivative exists. Here, we can use the monotonicity of the integrand to argue that

$$ \frac{ (\omega_{n,p}(r + \epsilon) - \omega_{n,p}(r)) e^{-r}}{\epsilon} \geq f'(r, \epsilon) \geq \frac{(\omega_{n,p}(r+\epsilon) - \omega_{n,p}(r))e^{-(r + \epsilon)}}{\epsilon}$$

Now, for both sides of the inequality, the limit as $\epsilon$ goes to $0$ is well-defined (we use the continuity of $e^{-r}$ as a funciton or $r \ge 0$, and that $\omega_{n,p}(r) = r^n \omega_{n,p}(1)$, which is also a continuous function of $r \ge 0$) , we get that the derivative $f'(s)$ is well-defined and is equal to

$$f'(s) = n\omega_{n,p}(1) s^{n-1} e^{-s} $$

and the result now follows from fundamental theorem of calculus.

(An alternate approach is to use the layer-cake decomposition; it works just fine (that is how I first did it), though it is a bit longer I think, and I had to use integration by parts to show that the two expressions were equal)

dohmatob
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E-A
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In the comments, the problem has been essentialized to computing the integral $\int_{B_{n,p}(0, r)}e^{-\frac{1}{\alpha}\|y\|_p^\beta}dy$. Here, I'll pursue the computations, only focusing on the case when $p \in \{1,2,\infty\}$.


Now, let $\varphi :[0, \infty) \rightarrow \mathbb R$ be a measurable function, e.g $\varphi(t) \equiv e^{-t^\beta/\alpha}$ (with $\alpha,\beta > 0$) in my problem. Define measurable functions $g,u:\mathbb R^n \rightarrow \mathbb R$ by $g(y) := \varphi(\|y\|_p)1_{B_{n,p}(0,R)}(y)$, $z(y) := \|y\|_p$. For $t \ge 0$, define the level-set $z^{-1}(t) := \{y \in \mathbb R^n \mid \|y\|_p = t\}=:S_{n,p}(0,t)$. Note that thanks to the triangle inequality for $\ell_p$-norms, $z$ is Lipschitz and $z^{-1}(t)$ is a.e smooth for all $t \ge 0$. Finally, note that $\partial_j u(y) = \dfrac{y_j|y_j|^{p-2}}{\|y\|_p^{p-1}}$ and so for every $y \in \mathbb R^n\setminus\{0\}$, we have $$ \begin{split} \|\nabla z(y)\|_2 &= \frac{1}{\|y\|_p^{p-1}}\sqrt{\sum_{j=1}^n y_j^2y^{2(p-2)}}=\frac{1}{\|y\|_p^{p-1}}\sqrt{\sum_{j=1}^n y^{2(p-1)}}\\ &=a_{n,p} := \begin{cases}1, &\mbox{ if }p \in \{2,\infty\},\\\sqrt{n},&\mbox{ if }p=1.\end{cases} \end{split} $$ For $m \in \mathbb N$, let $\mathcal L^m$ be the $m$-dimensional Lebesgue measure (aka $m$-dimensional volume) and let $\mathcal H^m$ be the $m$-dimensional Hausdorff measure (aka $m$-dimensional surface area). Then by the coarea formula, we have

$$ \begin{split} a_{n,p}\int_{B_{n,p}(0,r)}\varphi(\|y\|_p)dy &= \int_{\mathbb R^n}g(y)\|\nabla z(y)\|_2dy\\ &= \int_{\mathbb R}\left(\int_{z^{-1}(t)}g(y)d\mathcal H^{n-1}(y)\right)dt\\ &= \int_{0}^r \varphi(t)\mathcal H^{n-1}(S_{n,p}(0,t))dt\\ &= \int_{0}^r \varphi(t)\partial_t\mathcal L^n (B_{n,p}(0,t))dt\\ &= n\omega_{n,p}(1)\int_{0}^r \varphi(t)t^{n-1}dt, \end{split} $$ where we've used the fact that $\mathcal L^n(B_{n,p}(0,t)) =: \omega_{n,p}(t) = t^n\omega_{n,p}(1)$. In particular, let $\varphi(t) \equiv e^{-t^\beta/\alpha}$. Define the incomplete gamma function $\gamma:[1,\infty) \times [0, \infty] \rightarrow [0, \infty)$, by $\gamma(a,x) := \int_{0}^x e^{-s}s^{a-1}ds$, and note that $\gamma(a,\infty) \equiv \Gamma(a)$, the ordinary gamma function. Then, letting $u:=u(n,p,r,\alpha,\beta)$, one computes

$$ \begin{split} \frac{\beta a_{n,p}}{\alpha^{n/\beta}\Gamma(n/\beta)n\omega_{n,p}(1)}u &= \frac{\beta a_{n,p}}{\alpha^{n/\beta}\Gamma(n/\beta)n\omega_{n,p}(1)}\int_{\|y\|_p \le r}e^{-\frac{1}{\alpha}\|y\|_p^\beta}dy \\ &= \frac{\beta}{\alpha^{n/\beta}\Gamma(n/\beta)}\int_{0}^r e^{-t^\beta/\alpha}t^{n-1}dt\\ &=\frac{\gamma(n/\beta,r^{\beta}/\alpha)}{\Gamma(n/\beta)}, \end{split} \tag{*} $$ which is the CDF of the Amoroso distribution with parameters $\alpha^{1/\beta}$ (the scale), $n$, and $\beta$.

The LHS of (*) is the probability that a random vector $Y$ drawn from $\mathbb R^n$ drawn with density proportional to $e^{-\frac{1}{\alpha}\|Y\|_p^\beta}$ lies within an $\ell_p$-ball of radius $r$ around the origin. In particular, we derive from the above computations that the $k$ moment of $\|Y\|_p$ is given by $$ \mathbb E[\|Y\|_p^k] = \frac{\alpha^{k/\beta}\Gamma((n + k)/\beta)}{\Gamma(n/\beta)} \sim \left(\frac{\alpha n}{\beta}\right)^{k/\beta},\text{ for }n \gg \beta. \tag{**} $$

The special case $\beta=1$

In particular, if $\beta=1$, then

$$ \begin{split} \frac{\gamma(n/\beta,(r/\alpha)^{1/\beta})}{\Gamma(n/\beta)}&=\frac{\gamma(n,r/\alpha)}{\Gamma(n)}=\mathbb P\left(\sum_{k=1}^nX_k \le r/\alpha\right)\\ &= \mathbb P\left(\sqrt{n}\left(\frac{\sum_{k=1}^n X_k}{n}-1\right)\le \frac{r/\alpha-n}{\sqrt{n}}\right)\\ &= \Phi\left(\frac{r/\alpha-n}{\sqrt{n}}\right) + \mathcal O\left(\frac{1}{\sqrt{n}}\right), \end{split} $$ where $X_1,\ldots,X_n$ are i.i.d unit rate exponential random variables and $\Phi$ is the CDF of the standard Gaussian distribution $\mathcal N(0, 1)$, and we have made use of the Central Limit Theorem.

dohmatob
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    Fun fact: That integral you are computing actually has a name; it is called the incomplete gamma function https://www.maths.lancs.ac.uk/~jameson/gammainc.pdf – E-A Jan 03 '20 at 20:20
  • Yes, it's indeed proportional to the lower incomplete gamma function $\gamma(n,R) := \int_{0}^R e^{-t}t^{n-1}dt$ – dohmatob Jan 03 '20 at 20:52