Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 June 2019
We establish the general form of a geometric comparison principle for n-fold convolutions of certain singular measures in ℝd which holds for arbitrary n and d. This translates into a pointwise inequality between the convolutions of projection measure on the paraboloid and a perturbation thereof, and we use it to establish a new sharp Fourier extension inequality on a general convex perturbation of a parabola. Further applications of the comparison principle to sharp Fourier restriction theory are discussed in the companion paper [3].