Related papers: Seven mutually touching infinite cylinders
John E. Littlewood posted the question {\em ``Is it possible in 3-space for seven infinite circular cylinders of unit radius each to touch all the others? Seven is the number suggested by counting constants.''} Boz\'oki, Lee, and R\'onyai…
Let $N$ denote the maximum number of congruent infinite cylinders that can be arranged in $\mathbb{R}^3$ so that every pair of cylinders touches each other. Littlewood posed the question of whether $N=7$, which remains unsolved. In this…
Littlewood asked for the maximum number $N$ of congruent infinite cylinders that can be arranged in $\mathbb{R}^3$ so that every pair touches. We improve upon the proof of the second author that $N \leq 18$ to show that $N \leq 10$.…
We provide a complete classification of possible configurations of mutually pairwise touching infinite cylinders in Euclidian 3D space. It turns out that there is a maximum number of such cylinders possible in 3D independently on the shape…
Recently we gave arguments that only two unique topologically different configurations of 7 equal all mutually touching round cylinders (the configurations being mirror reflections of each other) are possible in 3D, although a whole world…
It has been a challenge to make seven straight round cylinders mutually touch before our now 10-year old discovery [Phys. Rev. Lett. 93, 015505 (2004)] of configurations of seven mutually touching infinitely long round cylinders (then…
Motivated by a question of W. Kuperberg, we study the 18-dimensional manifold of configurations of 6 non-intersecting infinite cylinders of radius $r,$ all touching the unit ball in $\mathbb{R}^{3}.$ We find a configuration with \[…
In general relativity (without matter), there is typically a one parameter family of static, maximally symmetric black hole solutions labelled by their mass. We show that there are situations with many more black holes. We study…
We consider random paths on a square lattice which take a left or a right turn at every vertex. The possible turns are taken with equal probability, except at a vertex which has been visited before. In such case the vertex is left via the…
This paper establishes the existence of infinitely many solutions for nonlinear problems without any symmetry, achieving three major advances. First, in the setting of semilinear elliptic PDEs, we introduce a refined variational truncation…
We prove that given a finite collection of cylinders in $\R^3$ with the property that any two them intersect, then there is a line intersecting an $\alpha$ fraction of the cylinders where $\alpha=\frac 1{28}$. This is a special case of an…
We revisit the problem of certifying the correctness of approximate solution paths computed by numerical homotopy continuation methods. We propose a conceptually simple approach based on a parametric variant of the Krawczyk method from…
The volume of a cyclic polytope can be obtained by forming an iterated integral along a suitable piecewise linear path running through its edges. Different choices of such a path are related by the action of a subgroup of the combinatorial…
In 1958, S. \'Swierczkowski proved that there cannot be a closed loop of congruent interior-disjoint regular tetrahedra that meet face-to-face. Such closed loops do exist for the other four regular polyhedra. It has been conjectured that,…
An arrangement of pseudocircles is a collection of simple closed curves on the sphere or in the plane such that any two of the curves are either disjoint or intersect in exactly two crossing points. We call an arrangement intersecting if…
The envelope theory is a method to easily obtain approximate, but reliable, solutions for some quantum many-body problems. Quite general Hamiltonians can be considered for systems composed of an arbitrary number of different particles in…
Numerical computations suggest that each point on a certain optimized shape called the ideal trefoil is in contact with two other points. We consider sequences of such contact points, such that each point is in contact with its predecessor…
We construct a highly-symmetric periodic orbit of eight bodies in three dimensions. In this orbit, each body collides with its three nearest neighbors in a regular periodic fashion. Regularization of the collisions in the orbit is achieved…
Given n points in Euclidean space E^d, we propose an algebraic algorithm to compute the best fitting (d-1)-cylinder. This algorithm computes the unknown direction of the axis of the cylinder. The location of the axis and the radius of the…
We present a new numerical homotopy continuation algorithm for finding all solutions to Schubert problems on Grassmannians. This Littlewood-Richardson homotopy is based on Vakil's geometric proof of the Littlewood-Richardson rule. Its start…