English

Improved upper bounds in the moving sofa problem

Metric Geometry 2018-10-30 v4 Optimization and Control

Abstract

The moving sofa problem, posed by L. Moser in 1966, asks for the planar shape of maximal area that can move around a right-angled corner in a hallway of unit width. It is known that a maximal area shape exists, and that its area is at least 2.2195... - the area of an explicit construction found by Gerver in 1992 - and at most 22=2.82...2\sqrt{2}=2.82..., with the lower bound being conjectured as the true value. We prove a new and improved upper bound of 2.37. The method involves a computer-assisted proof scheme that can be used to rigorously derive further improved upper bounds that converge to the correct value.

Cite

@article{arxiv.1706.06630,
  title  = {Improved upper bounds in the moving sofa problem},
  author = {Yoav Kallus and Dan Romik},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1706.06630},
  year   = {2018}
}

Comments

V2: Theorem 5 has been improved and its proof rewritten. V3: additional small corrections. V4: additional small corrections; final journal version

R2 v1 2026-06-22T20:24:28.444Z