Improved upper bounds in the moving sofa problem

Abstract

The moving sofa problem, posed by L. Moser in 1966, asks for the planar shape of maximal area that can move around a right-angled corner in a hallway of unit width. It is known that a maximal area shape exists, and that its area is at least 2.2195... - the area of an explicit construction found by Gerver in 1992 - and at most $2\sqrt{2}=2.82...$, with the lower bound being conjectured as the true value. We prove a new and improved upper bound of 2.37. The method involves a computer-assisted proof scheme that can be used to rigorously derive further improved upper bounds that converge to the correct value.