Sets of Discontinuities for Functions Continuous on Flats

Abstract

For families \(\mathcal{F}\) of flats (i.e., affine subspaces) of \(\mathbb{R}^n\), we investigate the classes of \(\mathcal{F}\)-continuous functions \(f\colon\mathbb{R}^n\to\mathbb{R}\), whose restrictions \(f\restriction F\) are continuous for every \(F\in\F\). If \(\mathcal{F}_k\) is the class of all \(k\)-dimensional flats, then \(\mathcal{F}_1\)-continuity is known as linear continuity; if \(\mathcal{F}_k^+\) stands for all \(F\in\mathcal{F}_k\) parallel to vector subspaces spanned by coordinate vectors, then \(\mathcal{F}_1^+\)-continuous maps are the separately continuous functions, that is, those which are continuous in each variable separately. For the classes \(\mathcal{F}=\mathcal{F}_k^+\), we give a full characterization of the collections \(\mathcal{D}\mathcal{F}(\mathcal{F})\) of the sets of points of discontinuity of \(\F\)-continuous functions. We provide the structural results on the families \(\mathcal{D}(\mathcal{F}_k)\) and give a full characterization of the collections \(\mathcal{D}(\mathcal{F}_k)\) in the case when \(k\geq n/2\). In particular, our characterization of the class \(\mathcal{D}(\mathcal{F}_1)\) for \(\mathbb{R}^2\) solves a 60 year old problem of Kronrod.