Related papers: Contact numbers for sphere packings
The maximum possible number of non-overlapping unit spheres that can touch a unit sphere in $n$ dimensions is called kissing number. The problem for finding kissing numbers is closely connected to the more general problems of finding bounds…
Continuing the investigations of Harborth (1974) and the author (2002) we study the following two rather basic problems on sphere packings. Recall that the contact graph of an arbitrary finite packing of unit balls (i.e., of an arbitrary…
Contact numbers are natural extensions of kissing numbers. In this paper we give estimates for the number of contacts in a totally separable packing of n unit balls in Euclidean d-space for all n>1 and d>1.
Packing problems, which ask how to arrange a collection of objects in space to meet certain criteria, are important in a great many physical and biological systems, where geometrical arrangements at small scales control behaviour at larger…
Sphere packing problems have a rich history in both mathematics and physics; yet, relatively few analytical analyses of sphere packings exist, and answers to seemingly simple questions are unknown. Here, we present an analytical method for…
The contact number of a packing of finitely many balls in Euclidean $d$-space is the number of touching pairs of balls in the packing. A prominent subfamily of sphere packings is formed by the so-called totally separable sphere packings:…
The topological structure resulting from the network of contacts between grains (\emph{contact network}) is studied for large samples of monosized spheres with densities (fraction of volume occupied by the spheres) ranging from 0.59 to…
Various packing problems and simulations of hard and soft interacting particles, such as microscopic models of nematic liquid crystals, reduce to calculations of intersections and pair interactions between ellipsoids. When constrained to a…
Let $C(n)$ be the solution to the contact number problem, i.e., the maximum number of touching pairs among any packing of $n$ congruent spheres in $\mathbb{R}^3$. We prove the long conjectured values of $C(6)=12, C(7)=15$, and $C(8)=18$.…
The kissing number k(3) is the maximal number of equal size nonoverlapping spheres in three dimensions that can touch another sphere of the same size. This number was the subject of a famous discussion between Isaac Newton and David Gregory…
Since Isaac Newton first studied the Kissing Number Problem in 1694, determining the maximal number of non-overlapping spheres around a central sphere has remained a fundamental challenge. This problem is the local analogue of Hilbert's…
A complex contact threefold is a threefold with a two-dimensional non-integrable holomorphic distribution. A contact curve on a contact threefold is an integrable curve of the distribution. This work was inspired by two papers of Bryant, in…
The problem of packing a system of particles as densely as possible is foundational in the field of discrete geometry and is a powerful model in the material and biological sciences. As packing problems retreat from the reach of solution by…
The contact graph of an arbitrary finite packing of unit balls in Euclidean 3-space is the (simple) graph whose vertices correspond to the packing elements and whose two vertices are connected by an edge if the corresponding two packing…
How many unit $n-$dimensional spheres can simultaneously touch or kiss a central $n-$dimensional unit sphere? Beyond mathematics this question has implications for fields such as cryptography and the structure of biologic and chemical…
Hard spheres are ubiquitous in condensed matter: they have been used as models for liquids, crystals, colloidal systems, granular systems, and powders. Packings of hard spheres are of even wider interest, as they are related to important…
Recently, we enumerate up to isometry, all locally rigid circle packings on the unit sphere with number of circles N<12. This problem is equivalent to the enumeration of irreducible contact graphs. In this paper we show that by using the…
The three dimensional structure of large packings of monosized spheres with volume fractions ranging between 0.58 and 0.64 has been studied with X-ray Computed Tomography. We search for signatures of organization, we classify local…
We introduce the notion of a "crystallographic sphere packing," defined to be one whose limit set is that of a geometrically finite hyperbolic reflection group in one higher dimension. We exhibit for the first time an infinite family of…
Inversive geometry can be used to generate exactly self-similar space-filling sphere packings. We present a construction method in two dimensions and generalize it to search for packings in higher dimensions. We newly discover 29…