Ball's Santaló type inequality for symmetric convex bodies

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Let KKsubseteqRn\mathbb R^n be a symmetric convex body, and define its polar body by

K∘={x∈Rn:⟨x,y⟩≤1  ∀y∈K}.K^\circ=\{x\in\mathbb R^n:\langle x,y\rangle\leq 1\;\forall y\in K\}.

Let B2n={x∈Rn:∥x∥≤1}B_2^n=\{x\in\mathbb R^n:\|x\|\leq 1\} be the Euclidean unit ball. Ball's conjecture.

∫K∫K∘⟨x,y⟩2 dx dy≤∫B2n∫B2n⟨x,y⟩2 dx dy.\int_K\int_{K^\circ}\langle x,y\rangle^2\,dx\,dy\leq\int_{B_2^n}\int_{B_2^n}\langle x,y\rangle^2\,dx\,dy.

This is a Santaló-type inequality comparing a symmetric convex body with its polar, with the Euclidean ball as the extremal case. The conjecture is resolved by the paper's proof; the abstract also states a stronger isotropic directional inequality and characterizes equality.

References

Primary source

Károly J. Böröczky, Konstantinos Patsalos and Christos Saroglou, “On Ball's conjectured Santaló type inequality”, arXiv:2602.20325 (2026).

Progress summary

Refreshed
Claimed solved

A 2026 research paper claims to settle Ball’s long-standing inequality, but the proof has not been independently verified.

Ball posed this conjecture in 1986 for symmetric convex bodies K⊆RnK\subseteq\mathbb{R}^n, asserting that the Euclidean ball maximizes the stated polar second-moment product.

Known results

  • Ball: the conjecture was previously proved for unconditional bodies; the supplied source gives no year for that result.

ArXiv version 3 (date not stated)

Károly J. Böröczky, Konstantinos Patsalos, and Christos Saroglou claim a proof for every symmetric convex body, with equality exactly for origin-symmetric ellipsoids. They also claim a stronger directional inequality under isotropicity, sharp equality for Euclidean balls, and stability consequences for the Blaschke–Santaló inequality. No independent verification, correction, withdrawal, or retraction was found.

Current status (as of September 2026): The conjecture has a published arXiv claim of resolution with an equality characterization, but the proof remains independently unverified.

Sources

Solutions 0

No solutions have been posted yet.