A note on projecting the cubic lattice (Q644824)

Motivated by a question in communication theory, the main theorem of the paper in review is as follows: Let \(\Lambda\) be an \((n-1)\)-dimensional lattice with Gram matrix \(A\) (with respect to some basis for \({\mathbb R}^{ n-1 }\)). For any \(\epsilon > 0\), there exist \(v \in {\mathbb Z}^n \setminus \{ 0 \}\), a basis \(B\) for the lattice \(\Lambda_v\) obtained by projecting \({\mathbb Z}^n\) onto \(\left\{ x \in {\mathbb R}^n : \, x \cdot v = 0 \right\}\), and a number \(c\), such that if \(A_v\) denotes the Gram matrix of \(B\), then \[ \left| \left| A - c \, A_v \right| \right| < \epsilon \, . \] Since both the determinant and minimal norm of a lattice are continuous functions of the entries in the Gram matrix, so is the packing density, and so the theorem implies that the packing density of \(\Lambda_v\) can be made arbitrarily close to that of~\(\Lambda\).