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In this research announcement we outline the methods used in our recent proof that the Leech lattice is the unique densest lattice in R^24. Complete details will appear elsewhere, but here we illustrate our techniques by applying them to…

Metric Geometry · Mathematics 2012-03-15 Henry Cohn , Abhinav Kumar

We call a periodic ball packing in d-dimensional Euclidean space periodically (strictly) jammed with respect to a period lattice if there are no nontrivial motions of the balls that preserve the period (that maintain some period with…

Metric Geometry · Mathematics 2013-01-07 Robert Connelly , Jeffrey D. Shen , Alexander D. Smith

We study the optimal packing of hard spheres in an infinitely long cylinder, using simulated annealing, and compare our results with the analogous problem of packing disks on the unrolled surface of a cylinder. The densest structures are…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2015-06-04 A. Mughal , H. K. Chan , D. Weaire , S. Hutzler

Compact packings are specific packings of spheres which can be seen as tilings and are good candidates to maximize the density. We show that the compact packings of the Euclidean space with two sizes of spheres are exactly those obtained by…

Metric Geometry · Mathematics 2019-05-14 Thomas Fernique

Determining the minimum density of a covering of $\mathbb{R}^{n}$ by Euclidean unit balls as $n\to\infty$ is a major open problem, with the best known results being the lower bound of $\left(\mathrm{e}^{-3/2}+o(1)\right)n$ by Coxeter, Few…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2025-10-30 Boris Bukh , Jun Gao , Xizhi Liu , Oleg Pikhurko , Shumin Sun

This is the first in a series of papers giving a proof of the Kepler conjecture, which asserts that the density of a packing of congruent spheres in three dimensions is never greater than $\pi/\sqrt{18}\approx 0.74048...$. This is the…

Metric Geometry · Mathematics 2007-05-23 Thomas C. Hales

Nearly orthogonal lattices were formally defined in [4], where their applications to image compression were also discussed. The idea of ``near orthogonality" in $2$-dimensions goes back to the work of Gauss. In this paper, we focus on…

Metric Geometry · Mathematics 2021-07-20 Lenny Fukshansky , David Kogan

We prove a lower bound on the entropy of sphere packings of $\mathbb R^d$ of density $\Theta(d \cdot 2^{-d})$. The entropy measures how plentiful such packings are, and our result is significantly stronger than the trivial lower bound that…

Probability · Mathematics 2019-12-04 Matthew Jenssen , Felix Joos , Will Perkins

Given a sphere of any radius $r$ in an $n$-dimensional Euclidean space, we study the coverings of this sphere with solid spheres of radius one. Our goal is to design a covering of the lowest covering density, which defines the average…

Metric Geometry · Mathematics 2018-05-22 Ilya Dumer

We provide, for any $r\in (0,1)$, lower and upper bounds on the maximal density of a packing in the Euclidean plane of discs of radius $1$ and $r$. The lower bounds are mostly folk, but the upper bounds improve the best previously known…

Metric Geometry · Mathematics 2022-06-07 Thomas Fernique

In "Dense Sphere Packings: A Blueprint for Formal Proofs" Hales proves that for every packing of unit spheres, the density in a ball of radius $r$ is at most $\pi/\sqrt{18}+c/r$ for some constant $c$. When $r$ tends to infinity, this gives…

Metric Geometry · Mathematics 2017-12-12 Nadja Scharf

Finding the densest sphere packing in $d$-dimensional Euclidean space $\mathbb{R}^d$ is an outstanding fundamental problem with relevance in many fields, including the ground states of molecular systems, colloidal crystal structures, coding…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2013-06-12 Étienne Marcotte , Salvatore Torquato

In $n$-dimensional hyperbolic space $\mathbf{H}^n$ $(n\ge2)$ there are $3$-types of spheres (balls): the sphere, horosphere and hypersphere. If $n=2,3$ we know an universal upper bound of the ball packing densities, where each ball volume…

Metric Geometry · Mathematics 2016-12-15 Emil Molnár , Jenő Szirmai

The aim of this paper is to study lattice-like coverings with congruent translation balls and the packings and coverings with a type of translation cylinders in Sol space related to the fundamental lattices. We introduce the notions of the…

Metric Geometry · Mathematics 2025-12-04 Judit Sajtos , Jenő Szirmai

In this paper we consider ball packings in $4$-dimensional hyperbolic space. We show that it is possible to exceed the conjectured $4$-dimensional realizable packing density upper bound due to L. Fejes T\'oth (Regular Figures, 1964). We…

Metric Geometry · Mathematics 2014-08-25 Robert Thijs Kozma , Jenő Szirmai

We show that the Leech lattice gives a sphere covering which is locally least dense among lattice coverings. We show that a similar result is false for the root lattice E8. For this we construct a less dense covering lattice whose Delone…

Metric Geometry · Mathematics 2009-09-29 Achill Schuermann , Frank Vallentin

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:…

Metric Geometry · Mathematics 2021-09-28 Károly Bezdek

The packing density of the regular cross-polytope in Euclidean $n$-space is unknown except in dimensions $2$ and $4$ where it is 1. The only non-trivial upper bound is due to Gravel, Elser, and Kallus (2011) who proved that for $n=3$ the…

Metric Geometry · Mathematics 2026-04-09 G. Fejes Tóth , F. Fodor , V. Vígh

In this paper we construct a new family of lattice packings for superballs in three dimensions (unit balls for the $l^p_3$ norm) with $p \in (1, 1.58]$. We conjecture that the family also exists for $p \in (1.58, \log_2 3 =…

Metric Geometry · Mathematics 2021-03-24 Maria Dostert , Frank Vallentin

We give theorems that can be used to upper bound the densities of packings of different spherical caps in the unit sphere and of translates of different convex bodies in Euclidean space. These theorems extend the linear programming bounds…

Metric Geometry · Mathematics 2014-09-26 David de Laat , Fernando Mario de Oliveira Filho , Frank Vallentin