Mallée's parabolic-triangle isobilliard conjecture

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Let BB be the unit disk in the plane, and for a convex shape K⊂R2K\subset\mathbb{R}^2 let c(K×B)c(K\times B) be the length of the shortest closed generalized billiard orbit in KK. Mallée's isobilliard conjecture. Mallée's parabolic triangle has the smallest area among convex shapes K⊂R2K\subset\mathbb{R}^2 satisfying

c(K×B)=1.c(K\times B)=1.

This is an equivalent formulation of the conjectural optimality of Mallée's example in Wetzel's worm problem. The source says the problem is still open.

References

Primary source

Alexey Balitskiy, Ivan Mitrofanov and Alexander Polyanskii, “Triangle covering problems and the Viterbo inequality in the plane”, arXiv:2603.12495 (2026).

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