Minimal volume product near Hanner polytopes (Q2452489)

Given a convex body \( K \subset {\mathbb R}^n \) containing the origin, its \textit{volume product} is defined by \( {\mathcal P}(K)= \min_{z \in K} | K | | (K-z)^{\circ}|\), where \( | \cdot | \) denotes the volume, and \( M^{\circ }\) is the \textit{polar} of \( M \). The \textit{Banach-Mazur distance} between symmetric convex bodies \( K, L \) is defined by \( d_{\mathcal BM} (K,L)= \inf\{c\geq 1: L \subset TK \subset c L, \, T \in GL(n) \}\). Denote also by \( B^n_2, \,B^n_{\infty} \subset {\mathbb R}^n \) the Euclidean ball and the standard cube, respectively. A symmetric convex body \( H \) is called \textit{Hanner polytope} if \( H \) is one-dimensional, or it is the \( \ell_1\) or \( \ell_{\infty}\) sum of two lower-dimensional Hanner polytopes. The main result of the paper is: Main Theorem. Let \( K \subset {\mathbb R}^n \) be a convex body close enough to one of Hanner polytopes in the sense that \[ \delta = \min \{ d_{\mathcal BM}(K,H) - 1: H \, \text{is a Hanner polytope in} \,\, {\mathbb R}^n \} \] is small enough. Then \( {\mathcal P}(K) \geq {\mathcal P} (B^n_{\infty}) + c(n) \delta\) where \( c(n)>0 \) is a constant depending on the dimension \( n \) only. Recall that the Blaschke-Santalo inequality \( {\mathcal P}(B^n_2) \geq {\mathcal P}(K) \) is valid for \textbf{any} convex body \( K \subset {\mathbb R}^n \), and Mahler conjectured that \( {\mathcal P } (K) \geq {\mathcal P} (B^n_{\infty})\) for any \textbf{symmetric} convex body \( K \subset {\mathbb R}^n \)