An inequality on the coding gain of densest lattice packings in successive dimensions (Q1265227)

The authors consider dense lattice packings of spheres and in particular the Hermite constant, which measures the density of densest packings. According to application to coding theory the authors call Hermite's constant the coding gain. They obtain a good lower bound for Hermite's constant by an inductive process of stacking together dense parallel layers of spheres in an \((n-1)\)-lattice. Lattices of this structure are usually called laminated lattices (cf. e.g. the standard book by Conway and Sloane) and it is known that the densest lattices up to \(n=8\) are laminated. The authors obtain their lower bound by tightening a result by Ryshkov (1974) on covering radius and minimum distance of a lattice.