Related papers: An Existential Proof of the Conjecture on Packing …
The Kepler conjecture asserts that no packing of congruent balls in three-dimensional Euclidean space has density greater than that of the face-centered cubic packing. In 1998, Sam Ferguson and I announced a computer-assisted proof of this…
This note initiates an investigation of packing links into a region of Euclidean space to achieve a maximal density subject to geometric constraints. The upper bounds obtained apply only to the class of homotopically essential links and…
For a planar point set $P$, its convex hull is the smallest convex polygon that encloses all points in $P$. The construction of the convex hull from an array $I_P$ containing $P$ is a fundamental problem in computational geometry. By…
The Gaussian Correlation Conjecture states that for any two symmetric, convex sets in n-dimensional space and for any centered, Gaussian measure on that space, the measure of the intersection is greater than or equal to the product of the…
The Union Closed Sets Conjecture states that in every finite, nontrivial set family closed under taking unions there is an element contained in at least half of all the sets of the family. We investigate two new directions with respect to…
The construction of optimal line packings in real or complex Euclidean spaces has shown to be a tantalizingly difficult task, because it includes the problem of finding maximal sets of equiangular lines. In the regime where equiangular…
Given a finite family of squares in the plane, the packing problem asks for the maximum number $\nu$ of pairwise disjoint squares among them, while the hitting problem for the minimum number $\tau$ of points hitting all of them. Clearly,…
It is shown that for a constant $t\in \mathbb{N}$, every simple topological graph on $n$ vertices has $O(n)$ edges if it has no two sets of $t$ edges such that every edge in one set is disjoint from all edges of the other set (i.e., the…
Packing problems have been of great interest in many diverse contexts for many centuries. The optimal packing of identical objects has been often invoked to understand the nature of low temperature phases of matter. In celebrated work,…
Suppose that each proper subset of a set $S$ of points in a vector space is contained in the union of planes of specified dimensions, but $S$ itself is not contained in any such union. How large can $|S|$ be? We prove a general upper bound…
We survey results on the problem of covering the space ${\mathbb R}^n$, or a convex body in it, by translates of a convex body. Our main goal is to present a diverse set of methods. A theorem of Rogers is a central result, according to…
Let $P$ be a set of $n$ points in an axis-parallel rectangle $B$ in the plane. We present an $O(n\alpha(n)\log^4 n)$-time algorithm to preprocess $P$ into a data structure of size $O(n\alpha(n)\log^3 n)$, such that, given a query point $q$,…
Let $L \subset {\Bbb R}^3$ be the union of unit balls, whose centres lie on the $z$-axis, and are equidistant with distance $2d \in [2, 2\sqrt{2}]$. Then a packing of unit balls in ${\Bbb R}^3$ consisting of translates of $L$ has a density…
In this paper, we prove that for any $1/2<t<1$, there exists a positive integer $N_{0}$ depending on $t$ such that for any $n_{0}\geq N_{0}$, squares of sidelength $f(n)^{-t}$ for $n\geq n_{0}$ can be packed with disjoint interiors into a…
In this paper we study the following problem: Given $k$ disjoint sets of points, $P_1, \ldots, P_k$ on the plane, find a minimum cardinality set $\mathcal{T}$ of arbitrary rectangles such that each rectangle contains points of just one set…
We show that every minimum area isosceles triangle containing a given triangle $T$ shares a side and an angle with $T$. This proves a conjecture of Nandakumar motivated by a computational problem. We use our result to deduce that for every…
We consider four problems. Rogers proved that for any convex body $K$, we can cover ${\mathbb R}^d$ by translates of $K$ of density very roughly $d\ln d$. First, we extend this result by showing that, if we are given a family of positive…
A convex polygon Q is circumscribed about a convex polygon P if every vertex of P lies on at least one side of Q. We present an algorithm for finding a maximum area convex polygon circumscribed about any given convex n-gon in O(n^3) time.…
The ordered configuration space of $n$ open unit squares in the $w$ by $h$ rectangle exhibits homological stability in the space direction. That is, for fixed $n$ and fixed homological degree $k$, once the underlying rectangle is large…
If a collection of identical particles is poured into a container, different shapes will fill to different densities. But what is the shape that fills a container as close as possible to a pre-specified, desired density? We demonstrate a…