New dense superball packings in three dimensions

Abstract

In this paper we construct a new family of lattice packings for superballs in three dimensions (unit balls for the $l^p_3$ norm) with $p \in (1, 1.58]$. We conjecture that the family also exists for $p \in (1.58, \log_2 3 = 1.5849625\ldots]$. Like in the densest lattice packing of regular octahedra, each superball in our family of lattice packings has $14$ neighbors.