math.MG — Metric Geometry
Contributed by Henrik Schou Guttesen
The moving sofa problem asks for the maximal area of a two-dimensional object capable of being moved through a right-angled corridor of unit width. J.~L.~Gerver constructed a sofa of area 2.2195…, which was only recently proven to be optimal by J.~Back. Here, I consider the moving sofa problem in an angled corridor, Cφ, of unit width for turn angles 0<φ≤2π. I first generalize Hammersley's arguments to devise simple analytical lower and upper area bounds for all 0<φ≤2π. ChatGPT-6 Astra (Codex) is prompted to derive a generalized Gerver sofa parametrized by φ. The generalized Gerver sofa area is non-analytic at the unique root φ∗∈(0,π/2) of exp(φ∗cotφ∗)=1+2cosφ∗−cos2φ∗. For turn angles smaller than φ∗ a closed-form expression of the sofa area is obtained. The generalized Gerver sofa is conjectured to be the solution to the moving sofa problem for turn angles 0<φ≤2π.
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