English

Perfectly packing a square by squares of nearly harmonic sidelength

Metric Geometry 2022-03-11 v2

Abstract

A well known open problem of Meir and Moser asks if the squares of sidelength 1/n1/n for n2n \geq 2 can be packed perfectly into a square of area n=21n2=π261\sum_{n=2}^\infty \frac{1}{n^2} = \frac{\pi^2}{6}-1. In this paper we show that for any 1/2<t<11/2 < t < 1, and any n0n_0 that is sufficiently large depending on tt, the squares of sidelength ntn^{-t} for nn0n \geq n_0 can be packed perfectly into a square of area n=n01n2t\sum_{n=n_0}^\infty \frac{1}{n^{2t}}. This was previously known (if one packs a rectangle instead of a square) for 1/2<t2/31/2 < t \leq 2/3 (in which case one can take n0=1n_0=1).

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2202.03594,
  title  = {Perfectly packing a square by squares of nearly harmonic sidelength},
  author = {Terence Tao},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2202.03594},
  year   = {2022}
}

Comments

11 pages, 1 figure. Several minor corrections