Convexity of the distance function to convex subsets of Riemannian manifolds

Abstract

A characterization of the proximal normal cone is obtained and a separation theorem for convex subsets of Riemannian manifolds is established. Moreover, the convexity of the distance function $d_S$ for a convex subset $S$ in the cases where the boundary of $S$ contains a geodesic segment, the boundary of $S$ is $C^2$ or the boundary of $S$ is not regular is discussed. Furthermore, a nonsmooth version of positive semi-definiteness of Hessian of convex functions on Riemannian manifolds is established.