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Exercise 1.2.25 (Lebesgue measure of continuously differentiable curves)

Let d ≥ 2, and let γ : [a,b] → ℝd be a continuously differentiable function. Show that the curve of this function has Lebesgue measure zero.

Answers

Since γ is a continuously differentiable function it must be Lipschitz. In other words, there exists a M > 0 with the property that d(γ(x),γ(y)) ≤ M ⋅ d(x,y) for all x,y ∈ [a,b]. In particular, if d(x,y) ≤ δ then f(y) ∈ B(γ(x),Mδ).

Pick an arbitrary n ∈ ℕ. Partition [a,b] into n equal subintervals with partition points t0,t1,…,tn and let mk be the midpoint of [tk−1,tk]. Let δ = b−a 2n . Then for each k

f([tk−1,tk]) ⊆ B(f(mk),Mδ)

leads to

f([a,b]) ⊆⋃ k=1nB(f(m k),Mδ)

and in turn the subadditivity of the outer measure implies

m∗(γ([a,b])) ≤∑ k=1nC(Mδ)d = C (b − a 2 )dn1−d

This holds for all n ∈ ℕ, therefore the above quantity must be zero. Taking Cartesian product preserves this by Exercise 1.2.22.

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2020-05-30 00:00
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