Non-continuous valuations on convex bodies and a new characterization of volume

Abstract: This paper investigates the use of automatic continuity techniques in the context of valuations on convex bodies. We first provide an automatic continuity theorem for valuations restricted to parallelotopes with respect to a fixed basis. This result in combination with a counting argument provides a strengthened version of a classical characterization of volume due to Hadwiger. As a byproduct of the proof it is shown that $[0,n-1]\cup{n}$ are precisely the possible degrees of homogeneity of bounded translation invariant valuations on $n$-dimensional convex bodies.