Exposed point

In mathematics, an exposed point of a convex set C is a point x\in C at which some continuous linear functional attains its strict maximum over C. Such a functional is then said to expose x. Note that there can be many exposing functionals for x. The set of exposed points of C is usually denoted \exp(C).

A stronger notion is that of strongly exposed point of C which is an exposed point x \in C such that some exposing functional f of x attains its strong maximum over C at x, i.e. for each sequence (x_n) \subset C we have the following implication: f(x_n) \to \max f(C) \Longrightarrow \|x_n -x\| \to 0. The set of all strongly exposed points of C is usually denoted \operatorname{str}\exp(C).

There are two weaker notions, that of extreme point and that of support point of C.