A new lower bound on the surface area of a Voronoi polyhedron

Summary

We prove that the mininum surface area of a Voronoi cell in a unit ball packing in <InlineEquation ID=IE"1"><EquationSource Format="TEX"><![CDATA[<InlineEquation ID=IE"2"><EquationSource Format="TEX"><![CDATA[<InlineEquation ID=IE"3"><EquationSource Format="TEX"><![CDATA[<InlineEquation ID=IE"4"><EquationSource Format="TEX"><![CDATA[<InlineEquation ID=IE"5"><EquationSource Format="TEX"><![CDATA[<InlineEquation ID=IE"6"><EquationSource Format="TEX"><![CDATA[$]]></EquationSource></InlineEquation>]]></EquationSource></InlineEquation>]]></EquationSource></InlineEquation>]]></EquationSource></InlineEquation>]]></EquationSource></InlineEquation>]]></EquationSource></InlineEquation>{\mathbb E}^3$ is at least $16.1977$. This result provides further support for the Strong Dodecahedral Conjecture according to which the minimum surface area of a Voronoi cell in a $3$-dimensional unit ball packing is at least as large as the surface area of a regular dodecahedron of inradius $1$, which is about $16.6508\ldots\,$.