On the maximum number of touching pairs in a finite packing of translates of a convex body (Q1601430)

An obvious but coarse upper-bound for the number of touching pairs in a packing of \(n\) translates of a convex body \(K\) in \(E^d\), \(d\geq 3\), is \({H(K)\over 2} n\), where \(H(K)\) is the Hadwiger number of \(K\), i.e. the largest number of non-overlapping translates of \(K\) that can touch \(K\). Here the author improves this upper bound to \[ {H(K_0)\over 2}n- {1\over 2^d(\delta(K_0))^{(d- 1)/d}} \Biggl({I_q(B)\over I_q(K_0)}\Biggr)^{1/d} n^{(d- 1)/d}- (H(K_0)- h(K_0)- 1), \] where \(K_0\) is the central-symmetrical body, \(\delta(K)\) is the density of the densest packing of translates of \(K\), \(I_q\) is the isoperimetric quotient \(S^d/V^{d-1}\) (\(S= (d-1)\)-volume of the surface, \(V=\text{volume}\)) and \(h(K_0)\) is the one-sided Hadwiger number of \(K_0\). As a corollary he obtains an upper bound for the number of times the minimum distance can occur among \(n> 1\) points in \(M^d\) \((d\geq 3)\), namely \({3^d- 1\over 2} n- {\omega^{1/d}_d\over 2^{d+1}} n^{(d- 1)/d}\), where \(\omega_d= \pi^{d/2}/\Gamma(d/2+ 1)\) denotes the volume of the \(d\)-dimensional unit ball \(B\), and the Minkowski space \(M^d\) is \(E^d\) with distances measured by a Minkowski norm.