Extremal cylinder configurations. I: Configuration \(C_{\mathfrak{m}} \) (Q2039310)

In the paper under review the authors study configurations of non-intersecting cylinders of the same radius \(r\) touching the unit sphere \(\mathbb{S}^{2} \subseteq \mathbb{R}^{3}\). A cylinder \(\xi\) touching the unit sphere \(\mathbb{S}^{2}\) has a unique generator (that is a line parallel to the axis of the cylinder) \(\iota(\xi)\) touching \(\mathbb{S}^{2}\). One can represent a confguration \(\{\xi_{1},\dots, \xi_{L}\}\) of cylinders touching the unit sphere by the configuration \(\{\iota(\xi_{1}),\dots, \iota(\xi_{L})\}\) of lines tangent to \(\mathbb{S}^{2}\). The manifold of all such six-tuples will be denote by \(M^{6}\). Let \(\xi, \xi'\) be two equal cylinders of radius \(r\) touching \(\mathbb{S}^{2}\), which also touch each other, while \(\iota, \iota'\) are the corresponding tangents to \(\mathbb{S}^{2}\). If \(d:=d_{\iota \iota'}\) is the distance between \(\iota, \iota'\), then one has \(r = \frac{d}{d-2}\), so it is in fact the same to study the moduli of six-tuples of cylinders of equal radii, or just the manifold \(M^{6}\) with the function \[ D(\iota_{1},\dots,\iota_{6}) =\min_{1 \leq i < j \leq 6} \, d_{\iota_{i},\iota_{j}}. \] In their previous work [ibid. 65, No. 2, 385--404 (2021; Zbl 1458.05041)], the authors constructed the deformation \(C_{6,x}\) of the configuration \(C_{6}\) of six vertical unit non-intersecting cylinders. The configuration \(C_{6}\) corresponds to \(x=1\) vertical unit non-intersecting cylinders. For \(x=1/2\) the authors obtained record configuration of six cylinders, denoted as \(C_{\mathfrak m}\), of radius \[ r_{\mathfrak m} = \frac{3+\sqrt{33}}{8} \approx 1.093070331. \] The main result of the paper under review is that the configuration \(C_{\mathfrak m}\) is a sharp local maximum of the function \(D\), so in particular the configuration \(C_{\mathfrak m}\) is not only unlocable but rigid. Moreover, the authors show that, \(\bmod \mathrm{SO}(3)\), the \(15\)-dimensional tangent space at \(C_{\mathfrak m}\) contains a four dimensional subspace along which the function \(D(\mathfrak m)^{2}\) decays quadratically, while along any other tangent direction it decays linearly.