Related papers: A conceptual breakthrough in sphere packing
We present a method to obtain upper bounds on covering numbers. As applications of this method, we reprove and generalize results of Rogers on economically covering Euclidean $n$-space with translates of a convex body, or more generally,…
Despite its long history, there are many fundamental issues concerning random packings of spheres that remain elusive, including a precise definition of random close packing (RCP). We argue that the current picture of RCP cannot be made…
Given a closed oriented manifold or more generally a group homology class, we introduce the spherical Plateau problem, which is a variational problem corresponding to a topological invariant called the spherical volume. In principle, its…
We describe algorithms which address two classical problems in lattice geometry: the lattice covering and the simultaneous lattice packing-covering problem. Theoretically our algorithms solve the two problems in any fixed dimension d in the…
We introduce a new technique that is used to show that the complex projective plane blown up at 6, 7, or 8 points has infinitely many distinct smooth structures. None of these smooth structures admit smoothly embedded spheres with…
We survey some old and new results concerning the classification of complete metric spaces up to isometry, a theme initiated by Gromov, Vershik and others. All theorems concerning separable spaces appeared in various papers in the last…
The space of orientation-compatible almost complex structures on the six-dimensional sphere naturally contains a copy of seven-dimensional real projective space. We show that the inclusion induces an isomorphism on fundamental groups and…
We present an infinite sequence of smooth embeddings of a connected sum of 6 projective planes in the 4-sphere, which are all ambient homeomorphic, but pairwise ambient non-diffeomorphic. The double covers of the 4-sphere ramified along…
We present the first systematic algorithm to estimate the maximum packing density of spheres when the grain sizes are drawn from an arbitrary size distribution. With an Apollonian filling rule, we implement our technique for disks in 2d and…
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…
Given a homogeneous Poisson point process in R^d, Haggstrom and Meester asked whether it is possible to place spheres (of differing radii) centred at the points, in a translation-invariant way, so that the spheres do not overlap but there…
We develop a model to describe the properties of random assemblies of polydisperse hard spheres. We show that the key features to describe the system are (i) the dependence between the free volume of a sphere and the various coordination…
In 2008, Schmidt and Tuller stated a conjecture concerning optimal packing and covering of integers by translates of a given three-point set. In this note, we confirm their conjecture and relate it to several other problems in…
We study the problem of high-dimensional multiple packing in Euclidean space. Multiple packing is a natural generalization of sphere packing and is defined as follows. Let $ N>0 $ and $ L\in\mathbb{Z}_{\ge2} $. A multiple packing is a set…
Extends previous work on a quintic-solving algorithm to equations of the eighth-degree.
In this paper, we show an improved bound and new algorithm for the online square-into-square packing problem. This two-dimensional packing problem involves packing an online sequence of squares into a unit square container without any two…
Co-oriented contact manifolds quite generally describe classical dynamical systems. Quantization is achieved by suitably associating a Schr\"odinger equation to every path in the contact manifold. We quantize the standard contact seven…
The problem of twelve spheres is to understand, as a function of $r \in (0,r_{max}(12)]$, the configuration space of $12$ non-overlapping equal spheres of radius $r$ touching a central unit sphere. It considers to what extent, and in what…
We study the packing of a large number of congruent and non--overlapping circles inside a regular polygon. We have devised efficient algorithms that allow one to generate configurations of $N$ densely packed circles inside a regular polygon…
This is the eighth and final paper in a series 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…