We compare the yields of two methods to obtain Bernstein type pointwise estimates for the derivative of a multivariate polynomial in a domain where the polynomial is assumed to have sup norm at most 1. One method, due to Sarantopoulos, relies on inscribing ellipses in a convex domain K. The other, pluripotential-theoretic approach, mainly due to Baran, works for even more general sets, and uses the pluricomplex Green function (the Zaharjuta-Siciak extremal function). When the inscribed ellipse method...

Let K be any subset of ${ℂ}^N$. We define a pluricomplex Green’s function $V_{K,\theta }$ for θ-incomplete polynomials. We establish properties of $V_{K,\theta }$ analogous to those of the weighted pluricomplex Green’s function. When K is a regular compact subset of ${ℝ}^N$, we show that every continuous function that can be approximated uniformly on K by θ-incomplete polynomials, must vanish on $K\setminus supp{\left(d{d}^c{V}_{K,\theta }\right)}^N$. We prove a version of Siciak’s theorem and a comparison theorem for θ-incomplete polynomials. We compute $supp{\left(d{d}^c{V}_{K,\theta }\right)}^N$ when K is a compact section.

We apply pluripotential theory to establish results in ${ℝ}^k$ concerning uniform approximation by functions of the form wⁿPₙ where w denotes a continuous nonnegative function and Pₙ is a polynomial of degree at most n. Then we use our work to show that on the intersection of compact sections $\Sigma \subset {ℝ}^k$ a continuous function on Σ is uniformly approximable by θ-incomplete polynomials (for a fixed θ, 0 < θ < 1) iff f vanishes on θ²Σ. The class of sets Σ expressible as the intersection of compact sections includes...