Related papers: The kissing problem in three dimensions
We prove that the kissing number in 19 dimensions is at least 11948, improving the bound of Cohn and Li by 256. By the odd-sign construction of Cohn and Li, it is enough to find a binary code of length 19 and minimum distance 5 inside the…
A kissing sphere is a sphere that is tangent to a fixed reference ball. We develop in this paper a distance geometry for kissing spheres, which turns out to be a generalization of the classical Euclidean distance geometry.
An elementary construction using binary codes gives new record kissing numbers in dimensions from 32 to 128.
We prove a sharp upper bound on the number of shortest cycles contained inside any connected graph in terms of its number of vertices, girth, and maximal degree. Equality holds only for Moore graphs, which gives a new characterization of…
We prove that the $D_4$ root system (the set of vertices of the regular $24$-cell) is the unique optimal kissing configuration in $\mathbb R^4$, and is an optimal spherical code. For this, we use semidefinite programming to compute an exact…
We consider three-dimensional clusters of identical bubbles packed around a central bubble and calculate their energy and optimal shape. We obtain the surface area and bubble pressures to improve on existing growth laws for…
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 best previous lower bounds for kissing numbers in dimensions 25 through 31 were constructed using a set $S$ with $|S| = 480$ of minimal vectors of the Leech Lattice, $\Lambda_{24}$, such that $\langle x, y \rangle \leq 1$ for any…
Every graph $G$ can be represented by a collection of equi-radii spheres in a $d$-dimensional metric $\Delta$ such that there is an edge $uv$ in $G$ if and only if the spheres corresponding to $u$ and $v$ intersect. The smallest integer $d$…
We generalize Banaszczyk's seminal tail bound for the Gaussian mass of a lattice to a wide class of test functions. From this we obtain quite general transference bounds, as well as bounds on the number of lattice points contained in…
We consider how flat a lattice simplex contained in the hypercube $[0,k]^d$ can be. This question is related to the notion of kissing polytopes: two lattice polytopes contained in the hypercube $[0,k]^d$ are kissing when they are disjoint…
A lattice $(d,k)$-polytope is the convex hull of a set of points in $\mathbb{R}^d$ whose coordinates are integers ranging between $0$ and $k$. We consider the smallest possible distance $\varepsilon(d,k)$ between two disjoint lattice…
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.
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…
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 this article we construct a sequence $\{M_i\}$ of non compact finite volume hyperbolic $3$-manifolds whose kissing number grows at least as $\mathrm{vol}(M_i)^{\frac{31}{27}-\epsilon}$ for any $\epsilon>0$. This extends a previous result…
The smallest maximum kissing-number Voronoi polyhedron of 3d spheres is the icosahedron and the tetrahedron is the smallest volume that can show up in Delaunay tessalation. No periodic lattice is consistent with either and hence these dense…
The boundedness of the kissing numbers of convex bodies has been known to Hadwiger for long. We present an application of it to the sum-product estimate…
A family of spherical caps of the 2-dimensional unit sphere $\mathbb{S}^2$ is called a totally separable packing in short, a TS-packing if any two spherical caps can be separated by a great circle which is disjoint from the interior of each…
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…