On the spherical Blaschke-Lebesgue problem
Abstract
The Blaschke-Lebesgue theorem states that the Reuleaux triangle has the smallest area among planar convex bodies of a fixed constant width. We study how small bodies of constant width can be on the unit sphere when is large. For a spherical convex body of constant width , its relative effective radius is where is the spherical -measure and is a geodesic ball of radius . Let be the infimum of the relative effective radius over all spherical bodies of constant width . Define and . For each fixed , we prove non-trivial bounds where and are defined in terms of either explicitly or through a root of a quartic equation. The upper bounds are obtained by constructing small spherical bodies of constant width: for by a spherical version of the recent Arman-Bondarenko-Nazarov-Prymak-Radchenko Euclidean construction, and for by spherical duality. The lower bounds are obtained by generalizing ideas from Schramm's argument for illumination of Euclidean bodies of constant width.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2606.30960,
title = {On the spherical Blaschke-Lebesgue problem},
author = {Abigail Hall and Andriy Prymak and Chanatip Sujsuntinukul},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2606.30960},
year = {2026}
}
Comments
15 pages, 2 figures