On a lower and upper bound for the curvature of ellipses with more than two foci

摘要

Let a set of points in the Euclidean plane be given. We are going to investigate the levels of the function measuring the sum of distances from the elements of the pointset which are called foci. Levels with only one focus are circles. In case of two different points as foci they are ellipses in the usual sense. If the set of the foci consists of more than two points then we have the so-called polyellipses. In this paper we investigate them from the viewpoint of differential geometry. We give a lower and upper bound for the curvature involving explicit constants. They depend on the number of the foci, the rate of the level and the global minimum of the function measuring the sum of the distances. The minimizer will be characterized by a theorem due to E. Weiszfeld together with a new proof. Explicit examples will also be given. As an application we present a new proof for a theorem due to P Erdos and I. Vincze. The result states that the approximation of a regular triangle by circumscribed polyellipses has an absolute error in the sense that there is no way to exceed it even if the number of the foci are arbitrary large.