Abstract
In a general Hausdorff topological vector space
E
, we associate to a given nonempty closed set
S
⊂
E
and a bounded closed set Ω ⊂
E
, the minimal time function
T
S
,Ω
defined by
. The study of this function has been the subject of various recent works (see Bounkhel (2012, submitted, 2013, accepted); Colombo and Wolenski (J Global Optim 28:269–282,
2004
, J Convex Anal 11:335–361,
2004
); He and Ng (J Math Anal Appl 321:896–910,
2006
); Jiang and He (J Math Anal Appl 358:410–418,
2009
); Mordukhovich and Nam (J Global Optim 46(4):615–633,
2010
) and the references therein). The main objective of this work is in this vein. We characterize, for a given Ω, the class of all closed sets
S
in
E
for which
T
S
,Ω
is directionally Lipschitz in the sense of Rockafellar (Proc Lond Math Soc 39:331–355,
1979
). Those sets
S
are called Ω-epi-Lipschitz. This class of sets covers three important classes of sets: epi-Lipschitz sets introduced in Rockafellar (Proc Lond Math Soc 39:331–355,
1979
), compactly epi-Lipschitz sets introduced in Borwein and Strojwas (Part I: Theory, Canad J Math No. 2:431–452,
1986
), and
K
-directional Lipschitz sets introduced recently in Correa et al. (SIAM J Optim 20(4):1766–1785,
2010
). Various characterizations of this class have been established. In particular, we characterize the Ω-epi-Lipschitz sets by the nonemptiness of a new tangent cone, called Ω-hypertangent cone. As for epi-Lipschitz sets in Rockafellar (Canad J Math 39:257–280,
1980
) we characterize the new class of Ω-epi-Lipschitz sets with the help of other cones. The spacial case of closed convex sets is also studied. Our main results extend various existing results proved in Borwein et al. (J Convex Anal 7:375–393,
2000
), Correa et al. (SIAM J Optim 20(4):1766–1785,
2010
) from Banach spaces and normed spaces to Hausdorff topological vector spaces.