English

Combinatorial cube packings in cube and torus

Combinatorics 2008-09-24 v2 Metric Geometry

Abstract

We consider sequential random packing of cubes z+[0,1]nz+[0,1]^n with z1N\ZZnz\in \frac{1}{N}\ZZ^n into the cube [0,2]n[0,2]^n and the torus \QuotS\RRn2\ZZn\QuotS{\RR^n}{2\ZZ^n} as NN\to\infty. In the cube case [0,2]n[0,2]^n as NN\to\infty the random cube packings thus obtained are reduced to a single cube with probability 1O(1N)1-O(\frac{1}{N}). In the torus case the situation is different: for n2n\leq 2, sequential random cube packing yields cube tilings, but for n3n\geq 3 with strictly positive probability, one obtains non-extensible cube packings. So, we introduce the notion of combinatorial cube packing, which instead of depending on NN depend on some parameters. We use use them to derive an expansion of the packing density in powers of 1N\frac{1}{N}. The explicit computation is done in the cube case. In the torus case, the situation is more complicate and we restrict ourselves to the case NN\to\infty of strictly positive probability. We prove the following results for torus combinatorial cube packings: We give a general Cartesian product construction. We prove that the number of parameters is at least n(n+1)2\frac{n(n+1)}{2} and we conjecture it to be at most 2n12^n-1. We prove that cube packings with at least 2n32^n-3 cubes are extensible. We find the minimal number of cubes in non-extensible cube packings for nn odd and n6n\leq 6.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0805.2493,
  title  = {Combinatorial cube packings in cube and torus},
  author = {Mathieu Dutour Sikirić and Yoshiaki Itoh},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0805.2493},
  year   = {2008}
}

Comments

21 pages, 3 figures and 3 tables

R2 v1 2026-06-21T10:41:23.914Z