Bourgain's slicing conjecture

For a convex body KRnK\subset\mathbb{R}^n, define its covariance matrix by

Covij(K)=KxixjdxKKxidxKKxjdxK,\operatorname{Cov}_{ij}(K)=\int_K x_i x_j\frac{dx}{|K|}-\int_K x_i\frac{dx}{|K|}\int_K x_j\frac{dx}{|K|},

and define

C(K)=K2detCov(K).\mathcal{C}(K)=\frac{|K|^2}{\det\operatorname{Cov}(K)}.

The isotropic constant LKL_K satisfies C(K)=1/LK2n\mathcal{C}(K)=1/L_K^{2n}.

Bourgain's slicing conjecture. There exists a constant c>0c>0 independent of dimension such that

C(K)cn\mathcal{C}(K)\geq c^n

for all nNn\in\mathbb{N} and all convex bodies KRnK\subset\mathbb{R}^n. This is the slicing problem, equivalently a dimension-independent upper bound on the isotropic constant. The source presents it as Bourgain's conjecture and gives no resolution, so it remains open.

Sources & referencesView supporting material

Primary source

Bo Berndtsson, Vlassis Mastrantonis and Yanir A. Rubinstein, “L^p-polarity, Mahler volumes, and the isotropic constant”, arXiv:2304.14363 (2023).

Additional references

2 papers in this index state this conjecture (2018–2023). The statement above is taken from the most recent of them; the others are arXiv:1811.00345.

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