Apollonian packings and hyperbolic geometry (Q1196142)

A classical Apollonian packing is an orbit of an initial circle by some group of Möbius transformations. \textit{D. Bessis} and \textit{S. Demko} [Commun. Math. Phys. 134, No. 2, 293-319 (1990; Zbl 0714.52006)] generalized the Apollonian packing to the case when the circles are no longer tangent. In this paper the authors review these packings from 3- dimensional viewpoint and compare them with results of \textit{Y. Miyamoto} and the second author [J. Differ. Geom. 34, No. 1, 175-192 (1991; Zbl 0729.53042)] who had studied some hyperbolic 3-manifolds with a geodesic boundary. Then they solve the conjecture of Bessis and Demko concerning the discreteness of the Möbius group they constructed. Furthermore they systematically generalize the construction of packings in terms of the Coxeter group theory, and at least they propose an efficient computational algorithm to draw the pictures based on a theory of automata developed by \textit{J. W. Cannon} and others [Word Processing in Groups. Jones and Bartlett (1992)]. Independently Maxwell and G. Mantica had earlier proved the first conjecture of Bessis and Demko by means of Coxeter algebra and group theory, respectively.