A Generalization of the Sphere Covering Inequality

Abstract

The Sphere Covering Inequality was introduced in \cite{GM} (\emph{Invent. Math.}, 2018) as a sharp geometric inequality that provides a lower bound for the total area of two distinct surfaces of Gaussian curvature 1. These surfaces are assumed to be conformal to the Euclidean unit disk and share the same conformal factor along the boundary. In this paper, we establish a quantitative generalization that relaxes the boundary matching condition by allowing the conformal factors to differ by a constant \( c \ge 0 \) on the boundary. This refinement reveals a new stability-type structure underlying the inequality. Our results show that the Sphere Covering Inequality is stable with respect to perturbations in the boundary data and provide a precise quantitative description of how the total-area bound varies under such perturbations. The generalized inequality provides new analytic and geometric tools for the study of elliptic equations with exponential nonlinearities, conformal geometry, and related problems in mathematical physics.