A genus-zero surface with bounded curvature enclosing less volume than the unit sphere
Differential Geometry
2025-12-23 v1
Abstract
We produce a family of bodies in parameterized by , each bounded by a smooth topological sphere with principal curvatures in , and having volume arbitrarily close to Thus, in contrast to the two-dimensional case, the unit sphere (which bounds a ball of volume ) does not enclose the minimal volume among all smooth spheres in with principal curvatures in . This answers a folklore question of Dmitri Burago and Anton Petrunin.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2512.19659,
title = {A genus-zero surface with bounded curvature enclosing less volume than the unit sphere},
author = {Matthew Bolan},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2512.19659},
year = {2025}
}