Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 February 2010
Let K be a compact convex body in ℝn not contained in a hyperplane, and denote the norm whose unit ball is ½(K − K) by ║·║k. Given a translative packing of K, we are interested in how long a segment (with respect to ║·║K) can lie in the complement of the interiors of the translates. The main result of this note is to show the existence of a translative packing such that the length of the longest segments avoiding it is only exponential in the dimension n (see below). We start here with a lower bound, showing that this bound is close to optimal for balls.