English

Dense periodic packings of tetrahedra with small repeating units

Metric Geometry 2012-12-18 v5 Soft Condensed Matter Statistical Mechanics

Abstract

We present a one-parameter family of periodic packings of regular tetrahedra, with the packing fraction 100/1170.8547100/117\approx0.8547, that are simple in the sense that they are transitive and their repeating units involve only four tetrahedra. The construction of the packings was inspired from results of a numerical search that yielded a similar packing. We present an analytic construction of the packings and a description of their properties. We also present a transitive packing with a repeating unit of two tetrahedra and a packing fraction 139+40103690.7194\frac{139+40\sqrt{10}}{369}\approx0.7194.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0910.5226,
  title  = {Dense periodic packings of tetrahedra with small repeating units},
  author = {Yoav Kallus and Veit Elser and Simon Gravel},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0910.5226},
  year   = {2012}
}

Comments

Last draft submitted for publication. Published version available at http://www.springerlink.com