An improved bound on the optimal paper Moebius band

We show that a smooth embedded paper Moebius band must have aspect ratio at least $$\begin{aligned}\lambda _1= \frac{2 \sqrt{4-2 \sqrt{3}}+4}{\root 4 \of {3} \sqrt{2}+2 \sqrt{2 \sqrt{3}-3}} =1.69497\ldots \end{aligned}$$ This bound comes more than 3/4 of the way from the old known bound of $$\pi /2=1.5708\ldots $$ to the conjectured bound of $$\sqrt{3} = 1.732\ldots $$